Why is it a challenge to convince people that light pollution is a problem? For example, St. Olaf Catholic Church is the parish I currently serve, located on the north side of the city of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. The combined population of Eau Claire and the surrounding cities of Altoona, Lake Hallie, and Chippewa Falls exceeds 100,000. What does this mean to the city dwelling astronomer? A lot of light pollution and not that many stars in the night sky to gaze upon. Here is a visual example of what I see when I look up while standing in our parish parking lot. Let’s compare the night skies over St. Olaf with those over another parish I once served – St. Raymond of Penafort in Brackett, Wisconsin. This rural parish is situated about twenty minutes east of Eau Claire. When the security lights turn off for the evening, the night sky reveals a far more starry reality from their parking … Continue reading →

To follow up on last week’s post, a big part of my vacation was to explore the capabilities of a new camera. Looking back, I can’t remember how I stumbled upon the TinyMOS Kickstarter for the Nano1. I wasn’t a frequent flyer on “fund-me” pages and really had no interest in donating toward new technological gadgets. Nevertheless, when I saw the advertisement for an astronomy camera for the beginner, I felt a tug. Ever since my youth, I wanted to do serious astrophotography, but after a few failed attempts in the film era and limited funds, I figured it was a lost cause. The promise of a user friendly camera to enter into astrophotography was quite alluring. After receiving the camera, I was impressed with how easy it was to use (after finding the power button of course). Now, truth be told, I don’t know if I would call it a completely “point and shoot” astronomy camera. In order to … Continue reading →

What are the most challenging questions to answer? From my experience as a science loving priest, I would have to say the easy questions pose the greatest difficulty. When someone asks me, “Father, why did you become a priest?” I often struggle to find an answer that gives the full breadth of meaning the question demands. To simply reduce my answer to feelings from childhood, affirmation from family and friends, or the life experiences that affirmed this feeling, though helpful, doesn’t provide the full spectrum of what I seek to communicate. Put another way, how does one take a 45 year journey and condense it to a 150 character tweet! I experience a similar struggle when someone asks, “Father, why do you love astronomy?” I could talk about my love of the night skies over the family farm, how my college astronomy studies grabbed me, and my first glimpse of Jupiter’s Moons through a telescope. Each answer, however, never leaves … Continue reading →

Has the moon become boring to the modern world? This question has been pestering my thoughts in the wake of the 50th Anniversary of Apollo 11. Yes, we enjoyed a brief window of intrigue as the anniversary approached. However, what has come of interest in our celestial partner since then? Granted, NASA plans on returning to the moon in 2024 as a major step toward sending people to Mars. However, I can’t help but wonder: Will the rest of the world rally behind this mission or will lack of human interest scuttle the journey? A fascinating and frustrating reality of lunar missions, at least in the United States, is the intimate connection between the Moon and politics. It was political will, in large part, that put humanity on the Moon. Though the purist in me would love to say that the natural human desire to explore would be enough to merit a return trip to the Moon, the inner realist … Continue reading →

In the past, I have shared reflections on the beauty of the skies over my parent’s farm. I often wish I could share both the stories and the visuals. A few weeks back, I mentioned that I have participated in a “fund-me” program for the development of a point and shoot astronomy camera. I’m happy to share that it is on its way! My plan is to use it on my vacation in a couple weeks to do some night photography on the Kurzynski farm. In the meantime, I thought it would be fun to get a cheap, but good camera set-up to do some astrophotography at the level of the beginner to both compare basic images of the sky with the Nano1 I’ll be reviewing in a couple weeks and simply get outside to enjoy the night sky. The pictures below are not the greatest, they’re noisy, and aren’t going to show up in any magazines anytime soon. The … Continue reading →

If you like the history of astronomy, then you should attend one of the History of Astronomy Workshops that are held at the University of Notre Dame every other year.  The Fourteenth Biennial History of Astronomy Workshop was held this summer, June 19-22.  The Vatican Observatory Foundation helped sponsor the workshop this year.  After all, the workshop is a conference about astronomy and about history, and it is held at a major Catholic University.  So it is just the V.O.’s sort of thing. Every Notre Dame workshop has a theme.  This year’s theme focused on the impact that images, both captured and created, have had on the history of astronomy.  A broad variety of images have served as a medium for advances and discoveries in astronomy, including early depictions of constellations and cosmologies the many centuries of images created to record and convey astronomical knowledge artistic and symbolic uses of astronomical imagery the development of the telescope, the camera, and … Continue reading →