Specola Guestbook | March 28, 1922: Raymond Archibald

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This entry is part 57 of 60 in the series Specola Guestbook

Since its founding in 1891, many people have passed through the doors of the Vatican Observatory.  A quick perusal of our guestbook reveals several Names, including Popes, nobel laureates, astronauts, actors, and saints. Today’s guestbook entry is from March 28, 1922, when Raymond Clare Archibald made a visit. Next to his name, Raymond Clare Archibald (1875-1955) wrote, “Professor of Pure Mathematics, Brown Univ., Providence, R.I.”  He was a mathematician, mathematics librarian, and mathematics historian. The year of his visit (1922), he was president of the Mathematical Association of America. He founded the journal Mathematical Tables and Other Aids to Computation. He edited several other mathematical journals. He grew the Brown University mathematical library into one of the preeminent resources in the field. He founded the Mary Mellish Archibald Memorial Library, which grew to over 23,000 volumes during his lifetime. He also served as librarian for the American Mathematical Society from 1921-1941.  

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North of Brahe

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This entry is part 33 of 32 in the series Lunarcy

Center bottom we have the spectacular crater Tycho (diameter 88km) the center of the largest ray system on the Moon that completely wraps around the globe. This is two days after the terminator passed over this crater and already the sun is high enough to show the rays without washing out some of the topographic details. For orientation purposes, the large dark crater at the top is Pitatus. Just below that are two similar sized craters Gauricus (82km) on the right and Wurzelbauer (90km) and off to the right is a much smaller well defined crater with a fairly dark patchy floor, Hell (34km). To the left of Pitatus and you’ll see one of the better double walled craters on the Moon, Hesiodus A (15km) looking like a little bulls-eye target with the small central peak. The parent crater Hesiodus (44km) is above it with a small 5km central crater. Going back to Tycho we can see one of the … Continue reading →

A little Light Thinking revisited

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                                  About this time last year I met Br Guy  in Dublin for breakfast,  – here is my blog revisited It’s raining as I write, water pours down the window like syrup in a jar. Montbretia in the garden seem to generate self-made light. Each flower punctuates the greyness with orange flames on stems within the hedgerow. It is often grey days that send me light thinking and remind me of how frequently I dwell on it. Recently I met Br Guy Colsolmagno for breakfast in Dublin. A sunny morning with the promise of more light to fill the day. We had a fun catch up chat within which were several moments of encouragement sprinkled towards my work. We then headed to the National Gallery of Ireland to see an impressionist exhibition. Sorolla Exhibition Sorolla was a Spanish master of light, the exhibition held … Continue reading →

Reflections on a calendar

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This entry is part 5 of 38 in the series And Then I Wrote

And then I wrote… in September our 2021 Calendars become available! What I suspect most people don’t notice is that on the back of every calendar is a little reflection that I write, based on a suggestion — often just a word — from Dr. Brendan Thomson, the volunteer who does all the legwork of putting these incredible calendars together. Over the next three weeks I though I would run the texts of these reflections from the calendars going back to 2016. If I can find earlier calendars I may add to this list! And since these are meant to encourage people to join our guild and get a calendar, I am not putting them behind the usual firewall… 2017 Calendar Why does the Vatican support an astronomical observatory? It’s a common question we get asked, and there are many simple answers.  The Observatory is a way of showing the Church’s support for science. It’s a way of demonstrating that, … Continue reading →

From the V.O. Faith and Science Pages: Vatican II – Joseph Ratzinger on The Christian and the Technological World

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Today’s featured entry from the Vatican Observatory Faith and Science pages: “Vatican II – Joseph Ratzinger on The Christian and the Technological World” (click here for it) An excerpt from the 1966 Theological Highlights of Vatican II, by Fr. Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI). The topic is the third chapter of the first part of Gaudium et Spes (“Man’s Activity throughout the World”), which treats science and technology…. [click here to continue]. The Faith and Science pages (F&S) are a unique resource on the web.  The material in F&S is stuff that you will find nowhere else (or at least not without a lot of digging).  Featured areas on F&S include “History of Church and Science”; “Church and Science Today”; “Science and Scripture”; “Science, Religion & Society”; “Life in the Universe”; “Cosmology”; and more.  The level of the F&S material ranges from being accessible to all audiences, with even some material oriented toward young readers, up to material for … Continue reading →

In the Sky This Week – August 25, 2020

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This entry is part 161 of 165 in the series In the Sky This Week

Get Well Connie! As I was working on images for this post yesterday, I had to rush my wife Connie to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy; hospital rules would not allow me to see her after she was admitted, and it was several hours before she was able to get into the operating room… Her appendix was removed and had not ruptured – which is what we were hoping for. As I’m writing this, she is eating for the first time in 24 hours, and it looks like they are starting on release paperwork. I love my wife dearly, but if she had a mutant super-power, it would be the ability to have calamitous things happen to her, or around her, frequently! Honestly, I’ve joked about this oddity for decades! Every time she gets hurt, I hum the first few bars of the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” theme! That theme song is Connie’s ringtone on my smartphone – … Continue reading →

Care for Creation and Contemplation of Creation – Deepening these New (Old) Works of Mercy

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When Pope Francis put forward two new Works of Mercy that pertain to Care for Creation and Contemplation of Creation, the response was underwhelming. I wish the reason was because people realized these Works of Mercy have already been a long part of our spiritual tradition. Whether it be Maximus the Confessor’s understand of Cosmic Liturgy, St. Bonaventure’s classic the Mind’s Journey to God, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s theology of Human Ecology, or Pope Francis’ expansion of his predecessor’s work into Integral Ecology, the Catholic Church has a long tradition of expounding upon the Biblical theme of Care for and Contemplation of Creation. In regard to Contemplation of Creation, I think it’s important for us to remember that the first call to practice this spiritual Work of Mercy was presented when God makes a sacred promise with Abram (soon to be Abraham) in the book of Genesis. How beautiful for a blog dedicated to faith and astronomy that one of … Continue reading →

Specola Guestbook | Feb 24, 1922: Mentore Maggini

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This entry is part 56 of 60 in the series Specola Guestbook

Since its founding in 1891, many people have passed through the doors of the Vatican Observatory.  A quick perusal of our guestbook reveals several Names, including Popes, nobel laureates, astronauts, actors, and saints. Today’s guestbook entry is from February 24, 1922, when Mentore Maggini made a visit. Next to his name, Mentore Maggini (1890-1941) wrote, “R. Osservatorio Astrofisico – Catania.” (Royal Astrophysical Observatory, Catania). He was an astronomer who studied binary stars and the Martian surface. In 1926, he would be named director of the Observatory of Collurania (in Teramo), where he would remain until his death in 1941. In his research on Mars, he focused on Martian cartography. Among his work, he studied the psycho-optic theory of Martian canals (i.e. the tendency of the eye to create connections between nearby points) at a time when most people thought the canals were real. He was among the first to do photometry using photoelectric cells, which he applied to the study … Continue reading →

Talking to Your Dog… or to E.T.

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This post comes from a “Science in the Bluegrass” column I wrote for The Record, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Louisville, Kentucky.  That column in turn came from a series of posts I wrote for Sacred Space Astronomy in early 2018, so if you have been reading this blog for a while, you will recognize the general idea here.   Extraterrestrials! They are an idea from science whose impact on popular culture has been huge. Think of those big movie franchises that involve beings from other worlds: Marvel, Star Wars, Star Trek, and more. Extraterrestrials have not always been popular. Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher from before Christ, reasoned that Earth is the only world that exists. No other worlds. No extraterrestrials. Aristotle influenced many Greco-Roman, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thinkers. However, in 1277, the bishop of Paris officially condemned Aristotle’s idea that Earth could be the only world. An omnipotent God, the bishop said, could make any number … Continue reading →

A Gift to Us?

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Professor Jim Peebles is the 2019 Nobel Laureate of Physics. I have had the pleasure to meet him and hear him give talks in the field of Cosmology, or the study of the shape, history, and future of the universe. In a recent talk Professor Peebles made an interesting comment about the study of science in general. He asserted that “nature operates by rules we can discover.” He went on to say that there was never a guarantee that it would have turned out to be that way. Scientists do seem to work with a kind of blind faith that the universe is knowable, and without necessarily realizing how exciting it is that so much of science is that way. After all, we know enough physics now to launch rockets that explore space. At the same time, there is a lot of physics that we still do not fully understand, such as how gravity works. When I give a talk … Continue reading →

Mars Earth Merge Painting

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When I first saw this image I thought it looked like petrified trees dotting the surface of Mars. Likewise the image could be  microscopic hairs on strange skin:-) However this amazing image is, in fact, a photograph which shows dark sand emerging on the surface of the red planet. This is  as a consequence of some of the ice-covered dunes melting in the warmth of spring sunshine. This classic view of Mars was taken by HiRISE one of the most incredible cameras working in space. The camera rides onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It subsequently produces feasts of data and true beauty to share with all of us.  A little Mars chat Earlier this  week I found a lovely NASA poster in my outreach box. It compares Mars to Earth in their similarities and differences. My grandson was fascinated by both planets even though he is only 3 and a half. We had a great chat about it all. As a … Continue reading →