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Tag Archives: amateur astronomy

Across the Universe: Stellar Round Up

Sacred Space Astronomy avatarPosted on October 17, 2019 by Br. Guy ConsolmagnoSeptember 28, 2019
This entry is part 93 of 191 in the series Across the Universe

This column first appeared in The Tablet in October 2008; we first ran it here in 2016 Black Mesa, Oklahoma sounds like the setting for a Hollywood Western. It looks like one, too. Every year at the Okie-Tex Star Party, three hundred amateur astronomers camp out for a week with their telescopes there, in hopes of dark dry skies. Some of their “amateur” instruments are larger in aperture than the telescopes of the Vatican Observatory in Castel Gandolfo. The miracle of computerized fabrication and the modern Dobsonian mount (a way of holding a telescope in place that replaces complex hardware with simple Teflon pads) has brought the cost of quality optics to the point where the price of a large telescope can be less than that of a small automobile. My GPS unit directed me as far as Boise City, two hours north of Amarillo, Texas; after that, I was following roads too small for most maps. I was there … Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy, Education, Light Pollution, Meteorites, Outreach | Tagged amateur astronomy, light pollution, Magnificent Universe | Leave a reply

Astronomy Club Stories

Sacred Space Astronomy avatarPosted on March 15, 2019 by Deirdre KelleghanApril 2, 2019

On March 22nd 2013 Br Guy Consolmagno came to visit St Cronans National School in Bray Co Wicklow. Even though he had  a very busy schedule while in Ireland,  he had kindly agreed to this extra task. The object was to say hello to my astronomy club boys. I had been running the club since 2010. Its members were school boys and their parents. We met once a month  and engaged in wide-ranging interesting astronomy. There was great excitement and anticipation at the school that day. So when we arrived the hall was filled to capacity with 500 boys. My club had about 18 boys. Br Guy wasn’t phased by the unexpected volume of children waiting for his every word. He also signed a copy of his book Turn Left at Orion for the school library. It was a red-letter day for the school, everyone was so happy. St Cronans Stargazers Astronomy Club In our little astronomy club we took … Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy, Education, Outreach | Tagged amateur astronomy, Astronomical Sketching, Astronomy Club, Drawing, IAU 100, Louisburgh Astronomy Club, Moon, St Cronans Stargazers | Leave a reply

Across the Universe: For the love of the stars…

Sacred Space Astronomy avatarPosted on October 18, 2018 by Br. Guy ConsolmagnoOctober 2, 2018
This entry is part 43 of 191 in the series Across the Universe

This column was first published in The Tablet in October, 2005; we first ran it here at The Catholic Astronomer in 2015 Standing in the lee of The Leviathan, a handful of amateur astronomers and their cool white telescopes huddled against the night Irish wind, praying for the skies to clear. We were attending the 20th Whirlpool Amateur Astronomy conference, held every autumn at the castle of Lord Rosse in Birr. Here in the 1840’s the Third Earl had built the world’s largest telescope: rightly called a leviathan, it boasted a mirror five feet in diameter set in a tube fifty feet long. With this giant he’d discovered the spiral arm structure in that galaxy off the handle of the Plough called The Whirlpool. (Actually it’s six feet in diameter, as I will discuss in a later post!) The third Earl was a classic example of an amateur astronomer: one who did his work only for the love of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy | Tagged amateur astronomy, Observatories | 2 Replies

Across the Universe: Shrine to the stars

Sacred Space Astronomy avatarPosted on August 10, 2017 by Br. Guy ConsolmagnoMay 30, 2018
This entry is part 137 of 191 in the series Across the Universe

The column first ran in The Tablet in August 2013 The Milky Way arched over my head, a swath of light through an inky-black sky streaking from Cassiopeia on the northern horizon, through the cross of Cygnus, to the hook of Scorpius just above the horizon due south. I was on a hilltop in southern Vermont attending this year’s annual convention of amateur telescope makers known as Stellafane. The name, we were told, means “shrine to the stars.” It’s not only the dark skies that attract amateurs to this location. Ninety years ago a group of twenty precision toolmakers in the small mill town of Springfield, Vermont, first gathered to share their knowledge of mirror-making and show off their equipment. In 1923, if you wanted a small telescope to look at the stars you either paid a small fortune or you made it yourself. Grinding a mirror into the parabolic shape that can focus faint starlight into a bright point … Continue reading →

Posted in Light Pollution, Outreach | Tagged amateur astronomy, light pollution, Stellafane | 3 Replies

Across the Universe: A Piece of the Action

Sacred Space Astronomy avatarPosted on January 12, 2017 by Br. Guy ConsolmagnoMay 30, 2018
This entry is part 107 of 191 in the series Across the Universe

This column first ran in the Tablet in January, 2012… you may see a strong connection with a previous post! They come by post and email, every week… requests from strangers who want me to read over their startling new ideas in astronomy; gifts of self-published philosophical tracts and theorems that will overthrow Einstein; warnings of perils from outer space that angels or aliens have revealed to the letter writers. Every observatory gets these letters. I imagine the coaches of sports teams must get just as many letters from fans with the designs for secret new plays that will win the next match for their favorite team. However, being both an Observatory and a part of the Vatican, we get a double dose. Why are they writing to me? At first, that question was centered on the “me” part; I have no authority on any of the topics they are writing about. But I’ve come to realize that a more intriguing question … Continue reading →

Posted in Popular Culture, Science | Tagged amateur astronomy, Amateur Science, Citizen Science | 2 Replies

Across the Universe: Awaiting the stars

Sacred Space Astronomy avatarPosted on December 29, 2016 by Br. Guy ConsolmagnoMay 30, 2018
This entry is part 105 of 191 in the series Across the Universe

This column first ran in The Tablet in December 2010. We returned to Australia in early December [2010], once more trying to find a clear night or two when we could map the southern sky. After being clouded out in August [see an earlier Tablet column here], nine days straight, we’d gone home without seeing the promised stars. Now we were waiting again, as the weather in Sevenhill stormed around us. Wednesday was the first night we could set up our telescopes without getting rained on. The evening started out promising, but an hour after sunset the clouds rolled in once again. It was just like our experience in August. But this time, with warmer weather than in August, we stayed outdoors and waited. Christmas carols warbled through the small speakers of my cell phone. My colleague sipped his cup of tea. Through cracks in the clouds, slivers of starlight peeped through, tantalizing us with a promise of what lay … Continue reading →

Posted in Commentary, Popular Culture | Tagged amateur astronomy, Australia, clouds, observing, Turn Left at Orion | Leave a reply

Across the Universe: Awareness

Sacred Space Astronomy avatarPosted on May 26, 2016 by Br. Guy ConsolmagnoMay 30, 2018
This entry is part 75 of 191 in the series Across the Universe

This column first appeared in The Tablet in May, 2010 “Adolescence,” said my colleague, the father of two teen-aged boys, “is when you’re filled with self-consciousness and completely lacking in self-awareness.” We were watching the students on his campus, obsessed with how they looked while being utterly out of touch with how they actually came across to other people. Of course, it is not just teen-agers. We marvel at how politicians, whose business is selling themselves, can make themselves look so bad; or how often we hear advertising that provokes us to swear we’ll never buy that product. And then we wind up buying the goods anyway. All of us spend our days walking around in a fog, self-obsessed while never really aware of ourselves or the universe in which we live. (Well, that’s true of me, anyway.) Sometimes the fog is literally real. [In 2010, I was] participating in the Texas Star Party, a gathering of 500 amateur astronomers (and … Continue reading →

Posted in Light Pollution | Tagged amateur astronomy, light pollution | Leave a reply

2016 Calendars are available!

Sacred Space Astronomy avatarPosted on July 29, 2015 by Br. Guy ConsolmagnoJuly 29, 2015
This entry is part 17 of 63 in the series Diary

  Every year, the Vatican Observatory Foundation publishes a calendar featuring fantastic astronomical images from amateurs around the world… and noting dates of particular interest to astronomers. They can be purchased online here… This year’s calendar is out, and it looks great. (OK, so as proofreader I missed a couple of glitches, which immediately made themselves obvious as soon as I opened up the printed version. Nothing as bad as a couple years ago when we got Galileo’s birthday wrong!) On the back, I always write a pithy little paragraph or two that nobody reads. As a freebie for readers of The Catholic Astronomer, here’s what I put there this year: A few years ago, a couple of cosmologists who styled themselves as atheists attempted to show that there was “no need for God” to start the universe, at the moment popularly known as the Big Bang. They proposed thatthat a quantum fluctuation in the zero-energy vacuum field of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Announcement, Astronomy, Education | Tagged amateur astronomy, Calendar, Magnificent Universe | Leave a reply
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Recent Posts

“Cosmos: Possible Worlds”, 10-13: Goodbye to a Losing Season

Sacred Space Astronomy avatarPosted on January 16, 2021 by Christopher M. GraneyJanuary 15, 2021

When your favorite team is not so good, sometimes the end of the season can come as a relief.  That’s doubly true when the last couple games of the season go especially badly.  This Cosmos fan finds himself happy to see this season come to an end.  There is always … Continue reading…

Posted in Astronomy, Popular Culture, Science | Tagged cosmos-possible-worlds | 1 Reply

JWST update – Hexagons in Space

Sacred Space Astronomy avatarPosted on January 15, 2021 by Deirdre KelleghanJanuary 15, 2021

My small group at Space Camp in Louisburgh. Proud of their new James Webb replica mirror and knowledge !! What an exciting week regarding the JWST announcment that the launch date is set for October 31st 2021 !!! Am shareing my previous blog about a workshop I did back in … Continue reading…

Posted in Astronomy, Education, Science, Space Exploration | Tagged ESA, Hexagons, James Webb Space Telescope, JWST, Launch, NASA, Space | 2 Replies

ⓜ Curiosity and the Exploration of Mars, I

Sacred Space Astronomy avatarPosted on January 14, 2021 by Br. Guy ConsolmagnoJanuary 14, 2021
This entry is part 1 of 54 in the series And Then I Wrote

And then I wrote… On January 12, 2021, the NASA Mars rover Curiosity marked 3000 Martian days on the surface of Mars. In 2012 I was invited to write an article about the exploration of Mars; “Curiosity e l’esplorazione di Marte” appeared in the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica on November 17,2012. … Continue reading…

Posted in And Then I Wrote, Planet, Space Exploration | Tagged Curiosity, Mars, NASA Solar System Exploration | Leave a reply

A Platonic journey

Sacred Space Astronomy avatarPosted on January 13, 2021 by Richard HillJanuary 13, 2021
This entry is part 38 of 38 in the series Lunarcy

I always look forward to the appearance of the 104km diameter crater Plato and surrounding environs as they emerge from the lunar night. There is so much to see there I find imaging irresistible. Usually I don’t like to do this wide a field but there’s much to enjoy. Plato’s … Continue reading…

Posted in Astronomy, Moon, Uncategorized | Tagged Craters, mare, Moon, mountains | Leave a reply

In the Sky This Week – January 12, 2021

Sacred Space Astronomy avatarPosted on January 12, 2021 by Bob TrembleyJanuary 14, 2021
This entry is part 179 of 179 in the series In the Sky This Week

Venus appears very low above the southeastern horizon before sunrise. Jupiter, Saturn and Mercury continue to form a triple conjunction in the southwestern sky at dusk – Saturn may be a bit difficult to see; Mercury appears slightly higher above the horizon each evening. Mercury appears in the southwestern sky … Continue reading…

Posted in Astronomy, Outreach | Tagged #CountdowntoMars, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Moon, NGC 6946, Orion, Saturn, Sun, Ursa Major, Venus | 2 Replies

Specola Guestbook | June 16, 1924: Knut Lundmark and Sten Asklöf

Sacred Space Astronomy avatarPosted on January 10, 2021 by Robert MackeJanuary 4, 2021
This entry is part 76 of 76 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 June 16, 1924, when Knut Lundmark and Sten Asklöf made a visit. Next … Continue reading…

Posted in Astronomy, History, Uncategorized | Tagged Andromeda, Asklof, galaxies, Lundmark, Specola Guestbook, Uppsala, Vatican Observatory | Leave a reply
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Recent Comments

  • Stan Sienkiewicz January 16, 2021 at 9:17 am on “Cosmos: Possible Worlds”, 10-13: Goodbye to a Losing SeasonIt is a shame that the producers of the show are not amazed by the real world and need to enhance reality with special effects. I feel you are discussing a topic that is coming up quite often about our culture: the lack of astonishment. I recently had taken a...
  • Fernando Comeron January 15, 2021 at 5:22 am on JWST update – Hexagons in SpaceIncidentally, you can see that we at the European Southern Observatory (ESO, of which Ireland is a member too) did something that bears some resemblance several years ago. We invited visitors to our headquarters near Munich on the open doors day in 2011 to put hexagons together to reproduce a...
  • Fernando Comeron January 15, 2021 at 5:07 am on JWST update – Hexagons in SpaceNice article, Deirdre -and actually hexagons in space are very common, although very tiny. Carbon hexagonal cycles are at the basis of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a class of molecules that compose the cold interstellar medium. So hexagons are pretty much everywhere in the Universe!
  • Bob Trembley January 14, 2021 at 2:01 am on In the Sky This Week – January 12, 2021Thanks for keeping me honest! :) I corrected it to say "Mercury appears slightly higher above the horizon each evening." When you advance days in Stellarium at dusk, you see Jupiter and Saturn get lower each day, and Mercury getting higher. Venus gets a bit lower each morning in the...
  • Joseph O'Donnell January 12, 2021 at 10:03 am on In the Sky This Week – January 12, 2021"Mercury appears slightly higher above the horizon each morning" I believe you mean Venus or am I missing something?
  • Christopher M. Graney January 4, 2021 at 10:50 am on Carols versus Matthew on the Star of WonderVery interesting -- I had never read the "Gospel of James", or "Protoevangelium of James", until now. Below is its whole section about the star, for those not familiar with it. Remarkably, the same problem is found in it. It follows Matthew in talking about the magi. No one knows...
  • Christopher M. Graney January 4, 2021 at 10:43 am on Carols versus Matthew on the Star of WonderI should have been more clear. When I said "This sounds just like the Great Conjunction of 2020", I meant it sounds like that *kind* of thing -- something no one who was not an astronomer would have noticed it just by chance.
  • Alfred Kracher January 2, 2021 at 10:47 am on Carols versus Matthew on the Star of WonderEmbellishments of Matthew’s simple “star” into a spectacular miracle are all but irrresistible. Already in the apocryphal 2nd century Gospel of James it shines with an “incredible brilliance amidst the constellations and making them seem dim.” And over the centuries artists of all kinds have further expanded on these exaggerations,...
  • Fr. Timothy Sauppé January 2, 2021 at 5:30 am on Carols versus Matthew on the Star of WonderI thought the biggest objection to the Jupiter/Saturn conjunction being the “Star of Bethlehem” was the 800 year cycle of its occurrence viz. the timing is off. Also, I am reminded of a comment of an amateur astronomer when he went to Chile, up in the Andes. He said there...
  • Stan Sienkiewicz December 26, 2020 at 1:07 pm on The Sun Illuminates Fort AncientYes, while not quite following the astronomy it still is fascinating to see what these early N American people did to their environment. As to why they did it and your article disagreeing with the solstice explanation reminded me of the book, Motel of the Mysteries. It is a funny...
  • Joel Hopko December 24, 2020 at 1:09 pm on Bah! Humbug. Science.And a very Merry Christmas to you Professor. May your spirit and inquiring mind continue to brighten our New Year! Joel Hopko
  • Fr. Timothy Sauppé December 21, 2020 at 6:04 pm on Was Jesus Born on December 25? The Fight Between Inculturation and Radical Certitude.Just saw this Socrates In The City from 2005 with Eric Metaxas interviewing Colin Nicholl. His book and thesis is that the Star of Bethlehem was one big comet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mT-8O8S_Fw&t=1s
  • Bob Prokop December 21, 2020 at 12:08 pm on Was Jesus Born on December 25? The Fight Between Inculturation and Radical Certitude.It's interesting that Tolkien chose March 25th as the date the One Ring was cast into the fires of Mount Doom (see the appendixes to The Return of the King for the date). It can't be a coincidence that the destruction of evil in Middle Earth coincides with the Annunciation...
  • Fr. Timothy Sauppé December 21, 2020 at 10:35 am on Was Jesus Born on December 25? The Fight Between Inculturation and Radical Certitude.Here is an interesting take by Liberato De Caro, Ph.D., of the Institute of Crystallography of the National Research Council in Bari, Italy, who led the research, proposes that the date of Jesus’ birth. He posits 1 BC for Jesus’ Birth. For your consideration. https://www.ncregister.com/blog/liberato-de-caro-nativity?utm_campaign=NCR%202019&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=102396683&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9xKkcgGuiy7rFyWiX8fgbgA63Wabi_9C-VcU6QmESl4QYoKUDYHXm6DrY_jGwbVptu0roDhgBz363uEIX8dd6P7oOaBQ&utm_content=102396683&utm_source=hs_email
  • Bob Prokop December 18, 2020 at 7:52 am on Pursuing the ConjunctionLooks like we're going to be clouded out here in Maryland. But I did get a good look at the two planets last night (Thursday). They were already practically on top of each other! So it has not been a total loss. By the way, your December 14th drawing is...
  • Fr. James Kurzynski December 14, 2020 at 6:42 am on Follow the Money, the Science, or the Theology? A Second Reflection on the Forthcoming Artemis Moon Mission.Thanks Ed! I so appreciate your thoughts! As a fellow "Star Trek" fan, I can appreciate you insight! :)
  • Fr. James Kurzynski December 14, 2020 at 6:38 am on Follow the Money, the Science, or the Theology? A Second Reflection on the Forthcoming Artemis Moon Mission.Absolutely! Send me a message through the "Contact US" tab!
  • Br. Guy Consolmagno December 12, 2020 at 10:09 am on ⓜ Cosmology and ExpertiseOh, yes!
  • Richard Gabrielson December 10, 2020 at 9:19 pm on ⓜ Cosmology and ExpertiseBr. Guy -- be SO GLAD those were private messages instead of questions from the audience at a big conference!
  • Ed Yepez December 10, 2020 at 4:31 pm on Follow the Money, the Science, or the Theology? A Second Reflection on the Forthcoming Artemis Moon Mission.I think I was too young to appreciate "Earth Rise", when I first saw it. Probably only after a few years of education, did I start to appreciate what the effort was to take that picture, and then the fragile beauty of the Earth (in contrast with the "Magnificent Desolation")...

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