Tag Archives: FAW

In the Sky This Week – January 22, 2019

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This entry is part 79 of 79 in the series In the Sky This Week

Back in Michigan and recovered from my trip to Tucson to help with Vatican Observatory Foundation’s 2019 Faith and Astronomy Workshop (#FAWVOF), only to be thrust into face-biting arctic-like conditions for the total lunar eclipse on Jan. 20th. The shape of the weeks-long conjunction of Jupiter, Venus and the star Antares in the southeastern predawn changes drastically this week, as Venus moves away from Jupiter and Antares. Venus appears to move away from Jupiter, and Saturn appears a little higher each morning. Venus was simply brilliant all week at the FAW! You may note how it’s getting just a little brighter each morning at 7:00 AM; this fact is not missed by my parrots – who scream for attention at the first hint of morning’s light. A waning gibbous Moon appears near the star Regulus in the predawn sky on Jan. 22nd and 23rd. An almost third quarter moon appears near the star Spica high in the southwestern predawn sky on Jan. 26th. … Continue reading →

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

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This entry is part 33 of 34 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 →

A letter from a Faith and Astronomy Workshop alumnus

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Dear Br. Guy: Fr. Timothy Sauppé here. I was in the 2015 inaugural seminar class at which you challenged us to take back to our parishes what we learned that week.  Well, as you know, since then I have been holding Star Parties at our local county park and giving talks on the effects of light pollution.   Most recently, I have had a commemorative bench installed and tomorrow we will honor a former parishioner who controlled 15 of the 70 earth and space based telescopes on August 17, 2017 and helped with the detection of the cosmic event from 130 million years ago that become GW170817.  He name is Dr. Jeff Cooke and he will be honored by our city and parish at 11 AM.  Here is a layout of the bench’s back which we filled with scientific information and pictures.   Pope Leo XIII would be proud.   God Bless, Fr. Sauppé This is a good place to … Continue reading →

Copernicus and the “High Seas” (iii)

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My posts from last week and the previous week were both about Copernicus and how he rejected the Two Spheres Theory (TST) regarding the shape of our world—that body we now call Planet Earth.  As discussed in those posts, the TST supposed that the world was composed of two spheres of material: an earthy sphere and a water sphere, with the earthy sphere bulging out from the watery sphere, like in the figure at right. As discussed last week, some people thought that the sphere of waters had been displaced away from the sphere of earthy stuff, with the result being that the oceans were higher than the lands, and this explained springs.  The thing that kept the waters from flowing back over the earth was the action of God. It’s not that seas being higher than the land, or needing to be held back, was a peculiarly Judeo-Christian idea.  According to David Wootton in his 2015 book The Invention … Continue reading →

Copernicus and the “High Seas” (ii)

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Last week’s blog post was about Copernicus and how he rejected the Two Spheres Theory (TST) regarding the shape of our world—that body we now call Planet Earth.  As discussed in that post, the TST supposed that the world was composed of two spheres of material: an earthy sphere and a water sphere, with the earthy sphere bulging out from the watery sphere as shown at right. There were a variety of ways by which this was explained.  Copernicus cites one in On the Revolutions—the idea that the earthy sphere has cavities within it, and thus apparently is buoyed by the water sphere.  David Wootton devotes a chapter to the Two Spheres Theory in his 2015 book The Invention of Science,* and notes other ways of explaining the TST.  One of these, he says, was that …the waters have been displaced from their original position, and their sphere now has a centre other than the centre of the universe.  This … Continue reading →

Copernicus and the “High Seas” (i)

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Copernicus’s 1543 book On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres is known for its proposition that our world is a planet circling the sun, but it also contains a discussion on the shape of our world, and even a mention of America.  There a story behind this, a story that contains within it a very strange incidence of the intersection of science and religion, one you may have never heard of.  This story will be the basis for the next few blog posts. Within Book 1 of On the Revolutions Copernicus includes two chapters on the shape of our world.  Chapter 2 of Book 1 he entitles “The Earth Too Is Spherical.”  He writes, The earth also is spherical, since it presses upon its center from every direction. Yet it is not immediately recognized as a perfect sphere on account of the great height of the mountains and depth of the valleys…. For a traveler going from any place toward the … Continue reading →

2016 FAW News stories

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One of our guests at this year’s Faith and Astronomy workshop was Dennis Sadowski, a reporter for the Catholic News Service. He’s published his first two articles about it on the CatholicPhilly.com website: Priests find comfort that in studying… Heavenly Mysteries: Questions of faith, science intersect… If you know about other recent news articles about the FAW, link to them in the comments! (edited to fix the link to the first story) … Continue reading →

Faith & Astronomy Workshop: Applications Open!

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  The annual Faith and Astronomy Workshop will be held next January 11 – 15, 2016, and applications are now open. What’s the FAW? Well… read on… What can modern astronomy tell us about creation – and its Creator? This four-day workshop, sponsored by the Vatican Observatory Foundation, is designed to bring those working in Catholic parishes an up-to-date overview of the universe: from the Big Bang, to the search for life in the universe, to our exploration of the planets… as seen through the eyes of the Jesuit priests and brothers who work at the Vatican’s own astronomical observatory. Our next workshop will be held the week of January 11-15, 2016, at the Redemptorist Renewal Center outside of Tucson, Arizona. Participants should plan to arrive on the afternoon of Monday, January 11; the work of the workshop begins that evening. Days and evenings are scheduled through Thursday. The workshop will end with Mass and breakfast on Friday morning, January 15. … Continue reading →

Talking Faith and Science, Part II (FAW): What works?

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As you recall, in January we held the first of what we hope to be an annual series of Faith and Astronomy Workshops. The 25 participants, educators, priests, and deacons from parishes from across the US and Mexico, gathered to learn a little astronomy from the inside while chatting about how we can combine astronomy into our ministries. In the first of these posts, I summarized how the participants described their experiences dealing with science and religion in their home parishes. In this post, I want to talk about their reflections on strategies that work… and don’t work. By the way, the participants all get a one-year membership to The Catholic Astronomer. I encourage them – and everyone else – to comment on this posting. Let’s keep the conversation going!   The second day, we addressed the question: What are basic strategies that have worked (or not worked)? The assumption is this: you are a scientifically literate member of a parish. How do you help others in your parish appreciate … Continue reading →