Category Archives: Diary

ⓜ Diary of March 8, 2019

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This entry is part 38 of 38 in the series Diary

It’s an amazing morning; for the first time in about three weeks I don’t have some deadline that has to be met by today, and I can actually catch my breath! Some Stats: But first, my monthly (a bit late this month!) summary of statistics. As of this writing we have 8,336 people signed up to get notifications of these posts either via Twitter, Facebook, or directly asking for email updates here. That’s not quite a hundred more than last month, when we had 8242. And we’re up to 120 subscribers, an addition of 4 new members. Thanks, and welcome! If we could double the size of the readership, would we double the number of supporters? It’s probably not that simple… but it would certainly help. And what’s new: So what is it that has kept me so busy? Travel to Kentucky and Ohio (including in Wapakoneta, the home of Neil Armstrong);  the Tucson Festival of Books; and talks to … Continue reading →

ⓜ Diary for February 25, 2019

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This entry is part 37 of 38 in the series Diary

(ⓜ = members only!) Back home in Tucson (and about to leave for another trip!)… The usual daily task is answering emails. But my emails tend to lead me down interesting rabbit holes: Giordano Bruno (I got two questions about him this week), what it’s like to attend a science fiction convention, and updates on book chapters both newly published and overdue… Two emails about book chapters, in fact: On behalf of Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. and Graham Oppy, I am pleased to announce the publication of Theism and Atheism: Opposing Arguments in Philosophyin both print and as an eBook. Citation information for the title is as follows: Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. and Graham Oppy, eds. Theism and Atheism: Opposing Arguments in Philosophy. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2019. I finally got to read the atheists’ arguments based on science. Um… I’m not convinced. At the same time I got another email reminding me that back in 2017 I had promised a … Continue reading →

ⓜ Diary for February 11, 2019

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This entry is part 36 of 38 in the series Diary

(ⓜ = members only!) This week… a trip to Boston, with my immediate schedule, and a sneak peek of a coming big deal, for members only…   I am on the train from Boston to Philadelphia as I write this. On Monday afternoon I am speaking at Bodek Lounge, Houston Hall, University of Pennsylvania (free admission but register online), then Tuesday I head back to Boston for talks at Harvard on Wednesday and Thursday. Friday finds me at the great Boston science fiction convention, Boskone:   My Schedule for Boskone 56: My Favorite World 15 Feb 2019, Friday 18:00 – 18:50, Burroughs (Westin) What fictional (or nonfictional) world would you most like to visit? Or inhabit? What makes it particularly attractive to you? Our panelists join in a lively, fun discussion of what it takes to become a preferred planet — and whether or not we need an escape plan to get back. Why do/don’t all our choices measure up? … Continue reading →

ⓜ Last (two) weeks at the Specola: February 2, 2019

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This entry is part 35 of 38 in the series Diary

(ⓜ = members only!) This week… a trip to Oral Roberts University, an interview in our chapel, and a surprise treat for our annual board dinner…   I get to travel to a lot of places that you wouldn’t expect a Vatican official to go. Among them have been Goshen College (run by the Mennonites), Brigham Young University (the Mormons, of course), and this month, Oral Roberts University. We really do…   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!   … Continue reading →

ⓜ This week at the Specola (ⓜ = members only!)

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This entry is part 33 of 38 in the series Diary

We’ve been wondering how to get more Sacred Space members, and more members logging in… and one suggestion was to have “subscribers-only” posts available. But what to put in those posts? Over the next couple of months we’ll try out various kinds of content, to see which ones are most popular with our members. One genre which I will have here are “Diary” posts – “inside baseball” accounts of what’s happening at the Specola. This is my first attempt at such a post. 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! … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Looking overhead

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This entry is part 181 of 181 in the series Across the Universe

This column first ran in The Tablet in January 2018 “What do you see when you look at the stars? Science, heaven, God?” the Italian Catholic newspaper Avvenire asked me in 2018. Does the sky look any different to a professional astronomer who is also a person of faith? The first thing I see when I look up at night is the beauty of the stars… just like anyone who can see the night sky.  But I do see more. My father, a US Army Air Corps navigator who once guided a wing of American bombers across the Atlantic to England in 1942, taught me the brighter navigation stars when I was a child. I’d also been given a wonderful book by the children’s writer H. A. Rey (better known for Curious George) that taught the constellations by turning the stars into connect-the-dot puzzles. Even today, whenever I see the stars I immediately start to identify old friends by name. … Continue reading →

Diary: Happy Birthday Katie!

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This entry is part 32 of 38 in the series Diary

Something I have come to understand, slowly but inevitably, is that astronomy is not about stars and planets; it is about people and how they (we) study those stars and planets. After all, one cannot understand the science of Galileo without knowing Galileo the person. He only was able to recognize what he saw in his telescope (he wasn’t the first to look) because he had an interest and training in art; he was only able to communicate it to the point that it led to a change in how humanity understood the situation (he wasn’t the first to try) because he had a passion for the Italian language and literature. If he had been a different person, our science would have had a different history… perhaps asking different questions, and accepting different answers as satisfactory. This blog has always been about people. And so I want to highlight someone here whose wonderful personality has been crucial to our success. … Continue reading →

Three paths to enlightenment. Or something. (Only one costs you money!)

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This entry is part 31 of 38 in the series Diary

This has been a great year for the Vatican Observatory Foundation, in a lot of ways. We’ve made major upgrades to the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope. We supported a fantastically successful Vatican Observatory Summer School, the 16th that we’ve run since the program began in 1986. The Jesuits and our adjunct astronomers have given hundreds of public talks and appeared in dozens of newspapers and media interviews. (I even got my picture on the front page of the New York Times!) Our Faith and Astronomy digital library is now up and running, at it has already attracted nearly 50,000 views. And the Catholic Astronomer website is now followed by more than 8,000 subscribers. In terms of supporting the scientific and educational work of the Vatican Observatory, we’ve never done more. The one downside? We are running seriously short in fundraising.  How serious? Well… every year we make up a budget, and for 2018 we assumed that we’d be able to … Continue reading →

Three Ways to Spread What’s Going On…

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This entry is part 30 of 38 in the series Diary

I got an email recently from someone who’d read an interview of mine… Hi Br. Guy, I just came across this 2017 article. Your quote, “More scientists who are church-goers need to make their science known to their parishioners”  is something that I have contemplated over the years but wasn’t really sure about how to exactly go about it, do you have any suggestions? Good question, actually. Here’s how I answered him:     Great to hear from you! And good on you, to call my bluff about me saying what “somebody else” should be doing! So here are some thoughts off the top of my head… Then I sent the following: 1. Read and spread the word about our two web sites, The Catholic Astronomer and our Faith and Science resource site. 2. Get involved with groups already in existence in your parish, such as the CCD classes the Knights of Columbus your local parish Mens’ club if one exists Once you … Continue reading →

An “Across the Universe” never run: God’s action

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This entry is part 4 of 181 in the series Across the Universe

Sometimes I write columns for Across the Universe that, for various reasons, I decide not to submit. Here is one that I prepared in 2016 while attending the 2016 General Congregation. I decided to go with last week’s column instead… in part because with the topic below I would either have run short (as here, well below the typical 600 words) or I would have gone way too long… I have been participating in the 36th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus, which finally closed on November 12 [2016]. It was an odd experience… half, six-week-long retreat; half, six-week-long faculty meeting. As you can imagine, I didn’t get a whole lot of science done during that time. But that’s not to say that I wasn’t thinking about science. It wasn’t particular projects waiting for me back at the office that held my attention, though, but rather the the whole enterprise of being a scientist. The fact is, for all … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Ordinary Time

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This entry is part 175 of 181 in the series Across the Universe

This column was first published in The Tablet in June, 2006, and re-run in 2015 here. The coincidence of the church calendar it mentions is also true this year, 2018… the text has been slightly altered to align it with 2018’s calendar. The work detailed here outlines what I was doing twelve years ago. An update appears at the end of the column.) Next weekend marks an unusual event in our recent Church calendar: a Sunday in “Ordinary Time.” What with Lent and the Easter season, and then the special Feasts of the Trinity and Corpus Christi, Ordinary Time has been rare lately. But I’ve been celebrating “ordinary time” at the Vatican Observatory as well. Unusual for me, I’ve actually been able to manage a month’s uninterrupted work in my laboratory. My airline’s frequent flyer program tells me I’ve flown over 27,000 miles since the last ordinary Sunday before Lent: an observing run at the Keck Telescope in Hawaii, a meeting … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Reaping the Whirlwind

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This entry is part 144 of 181 in the series Across the Universe

The year 2017 has been one of many destructive hurricanes. Five years earlier, I endured Hurricane Sandy. That month I ran a diary of my experiences in The Tablet. This column first ran in The Tablet in November 2012 October 29: I’ve been staying at the home of my friends Dan and Léonie in Long Island, New York, since Friday afternoon. My plan had been to visit over the weekend before flying back to Rome. Then Hurricane Sandy arrived. We lost power about 4:30 pm on Monday, and spent the evening in the dark, playing various “Twenty Questions” games. October 30: Their home was spared, but three trees fell on houses nearby, and another has blocked the end of their street. The airport is flooded, all flights canceled. This part of Long Island was hit by Hurricane Irene last year; everyone here is already well-rehearsed for surviving a hurricane. Dan’s university has its own power planet, so we can charge our cell … Continue reading →