Category Archives: Diary

Our Christmas Letter! (December 2020 Diary)

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This entry is part 63 of 63 in the series Diary

Every year we send out a real, paper, Christmas letter to all our supporters; if you have supported us in the past you should have received it by now. But just in case… and for the rest of you… here’s what we mailed out!  Have you had a chance to look at the evening sky this month? As winter approaches, so do the wonderful constellations of Taurus, Orion, and Gemini rising in the east. To the west, brilliant Jupiter and pale-yellow Saturn are moving closer and closer together; just before Christmas, on December 21, they’ll be so close together that you won’t be able to tell them apart with the naked eye. (If you miss this conjunction, you can look for it again in sixty years’ time.) Some imaginative types claim this alignment of the planets is a re-enactment of the Star of Bethlehem, though I have my doubts! In turbulent times like these I find great comfort in watching … Continue reading →

Calendars and Giving Tuesday: Diary of 25 November, 2020

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This entry is part 62 of 63 in the series Diary

Happy (American) Thanksgiving, everyone!  Along with a great day of feasting, and recalling the things we should be thankful for, it’s also the traditional beginning of the Christmas season. So of course I would be remiss not to remind you that it’s a great time to order Calendars (CLICK HERE!) which we can send to your friends and family (I always wondered about that phrase, “friends and family”; but maybe I am lucky that my family also count as my friends). They get a great calendar, with the proceeds going to support our wrk here at the Vatican Observatory.   Being thankful, and remembering friends and family, should also remind us of those who can’t be with family. For those who have been sent to prison, a calendar with the beauties to be seen overhead means a lot, when their night time views are limited to what they can see out a window. The quote in the photo caption came … Continue reading →

ⓜ Small Worlds: Diary of 21 October, 2020

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This entry is part 61 of 63 in the series Diary

First — congratulations to the OSIRIS REx Team for their successful “tag” of asteroid Bennu! As you may know, this asteroid mission is headquartered here in Tucson at the University of Arizona. Several members of the mission have worked closely with us; some have been scientific collaborations with Fr. Kikwaya and myself, they have given our Faith and Astronomy Workshop participants tours of the headquarters, and their spokesperson Dolores Hill was the keynote speaker at our annual seminar in February. The mission was the brainchild of the late Dr. Mike Drake, and I was Mike’s first graduate student, a (cough) few years back. After Mike’s sad death, Dr. Dante Lauretta took over the mission; his PhD director was my friend Bruce Fegley, whom I knew when we were undergraduates together at MIT. It’s a small world. But then, so’s Bennu. The other big news for us at the Specola here in Tucson this month — besides the fact that I … Continue reading →

ⓜ Speaking of speaking online: Diary of 19 August, 2020

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This entry is part 59 of 63 in the series Diary

It seems odd to write an online diary about how much time I have been spending online, but I am sure that my experience is hardly any different from yours.  Except… for the past twenty-plus years my life had been constant travel, reaching the top rank of my airline’s frequent flier status regularly, as I would go not only to Rome and back several times a year but also around North America and Europe giving talks and attending conferences. But now I haven’t left home since George Coyne’s funeral last February. (Speaking of which, be sure to check out the George Coyne memorial page, as several new memories have been posted in the past month or so.) It’s the longest I have been in one place since at least 2003, which is how far back I kept track of my calendar on my computer. I suspect it’s the longest I’ve been in one place since I joined the Vatican Observatory … Continue reading →

ⓜ Sunrises and Rosaries: Diary of 15 July, 2020

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This entry is part 58 of 63 in the series Diary

One of the ways I have been entertaining myself since the coronavirus lockdowns began is to follow the lead of my friend, the historian and science fiction author Ada Palmer, in posting a photograph every day on Twitter of #SomethingBeautiful — if you want to follow me, I’m @specolations — and this means digging through my cell phone for nice photographs. After a few months I realized I needed to start generating some new ones! Meanwhile, with the temperature in Tucson now regularly exceeding 100 F I have returned to my routine of sunrise walks (when the temperature is a mere 80 F) and discovering again how gorgeous the skies in Tucson can be at that hour. The great thing about making a habit of casual photography — I use nothing more than my iPhone and its standard Photo software — is that it makes you actually notice things you might otherwise walk past. It makes you be more aware … Continue reading →

ⓜ Soft Knox

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This entry is part 24 of 55 in the series And Then I Wrote

And then I wrote… Along with being interviewed in a literary blog (see the past two weeks) the year 2009 also saw me preparing a number of blog posts for a once-popular blog site called Live Journal. (Who would have thought that “blogs” would have disappeared so quickly? Another thing to blame on Facebook…) Most of what I wrote was ephemeral, but a few items are worth taking another look at. And the year 2009 was also the year that the Specola moved from its quarters of 70-odd years to new quarters in the Papal Gardens. Moving is never easy; especially when it means moving books that look so enticing to read. This one was a biography that, at first glance, has nothing to do with astronomy, but a lot to do with fame. [In order to read the rest of this post, you have to be a paid-up member of Sacred Space, and logged in as such!]

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Laudato Si’ Week and the passing of a good friend

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This entry is part 54 of 63 in the series Diary

I had meant to put up posts about two important events but yesterday I was trapped in a Zoom meeting all day so these are now a bit late; still, better late than never. The first is that this week is the fifth anniversary of the landmark encyclical on our relationship with nature, Laudato Si’, and as a part of its commemoration there are a number of events planned (alas, some already past) for Laudato Si’ Week – click on the link to follow up on them. Of course the message of this encyclical has been covered many times in the Sacred Space Astronomy site, and the document itself can be found (along with other relevant articles) on our Faith and Astronomy Resource site. This is in fact the inauguration of a Laudato Si’ year… The other event this week was the passing of the retired Father General of the Jesuits, Fr. Adolfo Nicolàs. Though he was originally from Spain, … Continue reading →

Happy Birthday Pope John Paul II

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Today would have been the 100th birthday of Pope (and now Saint) John Paul II. Pope Francis has already celebrated (click here) and of course this event will be especially noted in Poland. As part of that celebration, a Catholic newspaper in Poland, Wszystko Co Najważniejsze, asked me to write a short reflection on what Pope John Paul II meant for the Vatican Observatory. Since they are publishing it in Polish, I thought I would run my original English version here. (Anyone who reads Polish can comment in the comments about how well their translation came across! Actually, we do have two Polish speakers at the Specola… and the Polish website has their edited version of my English text.) The papacy of Saint John Paul II came at a watershed moment in the history of the Vatican Observatory. A new observatory director, Fr. George Coyne SJ, had just been named by his immediate predecessor, John Paul I; but Father Coyne … Continue reading →

ⓜ May daze… Diary of 16 May, 2020

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This entry is part 53 of 63 in the series Diary

I do two different kinds of “subscriber only” posts nowadays. The “And then I wrote” articles that come out on Thursday mornings are little bonuses to thank the people who subscribe. The other kind are diaries like this one, kept behind the firewall since that material is often “inside baseball” kind of stuff, or my own personal diary/blog, which would not be of interest to most people… just those friends of mine who are already interested enough to sign up. Of course, being a subscriber also gives you the chance to comment on what you read here. Sometimes people try to comment about our different articles by posting replies to Twitter. That doesn’t work, though, since most of the authors will never see what they had to say. In order for the author to read and reply, you need to sign in and comment in the comment section on this site! Lately, there have been people who subscribed but then … Continue reading →

ⓜ A month in the life, 2009…

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This entry is part 33 of 55 in the series And Then I Wrote

And then I wrote… Continuing my “Year of Astronomy”, here is an entry from March, 2009 for the “Cosmic Diary” blog… it’s a trip down memory lane, from when I was putting on 100,000 air miles a year. I’d stopped that foolishness even before the pandemic hit. A few paragraphs of a paper I submitted in late 2007 were the basis for a talk I gave last summer at the Asteroids, Comets, and Meteorites conference. It was about how the porosity of meteorites, and the porosity of the asteroids they come from, seem to show an interesting pattern… increasing, so that stuff appears to get fluffier and fluffier as you go further and further out in the asteroid belt and beyond. The talk last summer got a nice, favorable response from the conference attendees and so I decided I should write it up for the conference proceedings. Deadline, December 1, 2008. By January 2009 – only a month after the deadline … Continue reading →

ⓜ VOF at Home… Diary of 16 April, 2020

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This entry is part 2 of 63 in the series Diary

It’s been a few months since I have given an update as to what we’ve been doing here at the Foundation. Of course, I did provide a couple of diaries describing the science happening here, but it’s also time to review the state of this site and the foundation in general. Our stats: As of today, we have 164 paid subscribers (three new subscribers since the last diary — thanks and welcome!) and 10,029 people (we’ve topped ten thousand!) who get notified of new postings. We continue to grow, but not nearly fast enough to keep us in business. Please tell more people about our site; and if you can, please subscribe at a rate of $10 a month (especially since you’re probably not going out to get donuts at this time) or $100 per year. And tell your friends about the site… Which brings us back why we do the work we do. Even – perhaps especially – in a … Continue reading →