Tag Archives: History

ⓜ Pope Benedict and the astronomers…

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This entry is part 16 of 55 in the series And Then I Wrote

And then I wrote… On occasion I’ve quoted various posts I had up at my long-departed LiveJournal site. This one, from December, 2008, features not only such a post but the English version of an article that eventually was published in Italian in L’Osservatore Romano At his weekly “Angelus” prayer and public address at noon on Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI had a nice call out to us astronomers. I haven’t seen an official English translation yet, but here’s my translation of his comments. …This mystery of salvation has a cosmic dimension: Christ is the Sun which, with its light, “transfigures and illuminates the universe in waiting.” The setting of the feast of Christmas is tied to the winter solstice, when the days in the northern hemisphere begin to get longer. And incidentally, perhaps not everyone realizes that St. Peter’s Square is also a meridian: the great Obelisk throws its shadow along a line that runs across the pavement up to the … Continue reading →

ⓜ Faith and the Cosmos III

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This entry is part 3 of 55 in the series And Then I Wrote

And then I wrote… the conclusion of my mystery article (where did it get published?) about cosmology and how what we think about the universe shapes the way we study it… Newton’s  immense deterministic system seemed unshakeable. And the only role left for God in such a system is to set the initial conditions, to be (in the Aristotelean sense) the “Prime Mover,” the Great Watchmaker who perhaps built the watch, wound it up, and set it running in its inexorable course.  What is a “Rational” Explanation? Beyond the obvious fallacies of such a system in the light of contemporary physics (according  to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the “exact knowledge” of a particle’s position and momentum, for example, is meaningless because they cannot both be determined at the same time), there was a more subtle problem with this cosmology. It insisted that every unexplainable experience must have a “rational” explanation, where “rational” was quickly limited in practice to mean the common … Continue reading →

ⓜ Faith and the Cosmos II

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This entry is part 4 of 55 in the series And Then I Wrote

And then I wrote… part II of an article that dates from 2011 but I have no idea where it ever got published… The Physical and the Spiritual: Even after the adoption of a cosmology based on a spherical earth, a common feature of most cosmologies was the belief that the physical universe mirrored the spiritual realm.  This often involved positing a “chain of creation” in which different levels or aspects of the physical universe were assigned to different elements, different gods, or different ranks of angels. Those different ranks were given names (thrones, dominions) and are what St. Paul was referring to in his letters, cited above. By the Middle Ages, it was assumed that the home of the saints and the biblical firmament were the outer spheres of the universe; below them were the spheres of each planet, moved by angels, and their perfect eternal circular motions stood in contrast to the irregular and finite movements of objects on … Continue reading →

ⓜ Science and humility

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This entry is part 20 of 55 in the series And Then I Wrote

And then I wrote: As I have mentioned, in 2009 the Redemptorist Press invited me to write a series of reflections on issues of religion and science for the Sunday bulletins that are distributed in churches throughout the United Kingdom.  As it happens, the days of the week in 2009 match those of 2020 (after this year’s leap day) and the liturgical calendar also matches; thus, both in 2009 and 2020, the 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time falls on 2 August. Here’s what I wrote for the that reflection: Children are fascinated by nature. They are tireless collectors of rocks and bugs, and full of curiosity about the sky and stars. Sadly, by the time they become teenagers, much of that enthusiasm is lost. That also happens with religion, of course. Too many people stop learning anything new about their faith by the time they finish with confirmation classes. And so too often we go through life with a 12-year-old’s … Continue reading →

ⓜ A familiar tale for a new audience

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This entry is part 23 of 55 in the series And Then I Wrote

And then I wrote: As I mentioned last week, in 2009 the Redemptorist Press invited me to write a series of reflections on issues of religion and science for the Sunday bulletins that are distributed in churches throughout the United Kingdom.  Recall, the days of the week in 2009 match those of 2020 (after this year’s leap day) and the liturgical calendar also matches; thus, both in 2009 and 2020, the 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time falls on 12 July. Here’s what I wrote for the second reflection… it’s a new retelling of a tale familiar to most of our readers.  Since most of the text material is familiar, I am appending at the end a number of historical images from our archives that you may not have seen before… Studying creation is a time-honored way of coming closer to God. In the opening chapter of his Letter to the Romans, St. Paul points out that, since the beginning of … Continue reading →

Specola Guestbook: July 11, 1910 – Emily Dobbin

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This entry is part 18 of 78 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 July 11, 1910, when Emily Dobbin made a visit. Next to her name, Emily Elisabeth Dobbin (1875-1949) wrote, “Inst. Math & Surveying, M.A.H.S., St. Paul, Minn.” (Instructor of Mathematics and Surveying, Mechanic Arts High School, St. Paul MN) Dobbin was trained as an astronomer, receiving a masters’ degree from the University of Chicago in 1903. She worked at Yerkes Observatory, resulting in two single-authored publications (one on the orbit of the Jovian satellite Amalthea and another on Orion-type stars). However, her astronomical career never really progressed past that point. She taught mathematics, first at the University of Missouri, and then at a high school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Dobbin is particularly notable for her work in an entirely different field: that of … Continue reading →

Specola Guestbook: October 11, 1909 – Eduard Study

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This entry is part 7 of 78 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 October 11, 1909, when Eduard Study made a visit. Next to his name, Christian Hugo Eduard Study (1862-1930) wrote “Bonn a. Rh. Argelanderstr. 126” (Bonn am Rhein, Argelanderstraße 126).  He signed the guestbook again on April 10 of the following year. Eduard Study was a mathematician who made significant contributions in the field.  At the time of his visit, he was a professor of mathematics at the University of Bonn. His contributions include the associative algebra of dual quaternions, kinematics, hypercomplex numbers, and, pertaining to quantum chemistry, a theory governing the coupling of angular momenta (that also applied to electron spin couplings). At least two mathematical concepts bear his name: Study quaternions (aka semiquaternions) and the Fubini-Study metric.  

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Please Welcome our new Blogger: Chris Olsen

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Chris Olsen has a degree in history, and is a student of 19th-century photography and science. Chris does daguerreotypes and wet plate collodion, which are the two first photographic processes that were commercially successful. Chris works as an operator at Fermi National Accelerator Lab; this offers him the very special privilege of taking his camera equipment into the accelerator complex and using this 150-year-old process to take pictures of it. Chris also does backstage concert photography and takes pictures of Civil War reenactors. Chris uses his own 19th-century equipment, and gives these photographs to the Civil War reenactors as gifts. Chris will be writing a series about 19th century solar observation, and recreating the instruments used during that period. Chris has started researching the English scientist and astronomer Norman Lockyer; during the next total solar eclipse, Chris hopes to “discover” the element helium using the spectrometer he built.  

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Happy Birthday to the Father of Astrophysics!

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Father Angelo Secchi, sometimes called the Father of Astrophysics, was born 200 years ago on this day (June 28). [Note that many sources get his birthday wrong, thinking it was the 29th. He was born on the 28th, baptized on the 29th, according to his biographer Dr. Ileana Chinnici, who’s seen the documents in question. Also many sources think that he had a first name beginning with a P, often listed as Pietro, because he was often referred to as “P. Angelo Secchi” but in fact the P there stands for Padre, signifying that he was a priest.] Secchi’s work at the Roman College attracted great positive attention the science and the Church at a time when both were under attack… and probably led to the foundation of the Vatican Observatory a few years after his death in 1879. Father Chris Corbally has written a short piece about him which is running in the American Astronomical Society’s This Month in … Continue reading →

Let’s Go To The Moon – Apollo 11 new drawing workshop

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Recently I was invited to do two workshops at St Columba’s College in Dublin.  I decided to launch my new workshop  for 2018/2019 entitled, Let’s Go To The Moon –  Apollo 11 . The college was founded in 1843. The architecture is a cross-pollination of Victorian , Georgian and 21st century on a 140 acre setting on the slopes of the Dublin mountains. The day I visited the grounds were acutely swaddled  in snow,adding to the rich atmosphere of the place and its history. The phrase deep and crisp and even echoed in my head. My workshops were part of the college Arts Week 2018. Attending were a mixture of primary school and first year second level pupils. The sessions took place in the beautiful new science building fully equipped for exploring the moon landing through drawing. The room has a lovely new 8 inch dob, which the science teacher will use to share the moon and other night time … Continue reading →

Endeavour Space Academy

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I cannot remember a time when I haven’t been fascinated with astronomy, the space program, and science fiction. I was a child during the Apollo era, and a young man when the original COSMOS first aired. I cut my teeth on Star Trek, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Larry Niven; Carl Sagan was, and remains to this day, my personal hero. Now that I think about it, I started doing astronomy outreach the moment I got my first cheap telescope in 1968; I showed the Moon, Jupiter, and Saturn to the neighbors, and took it with me to summer camp. I had one of those really scary green glass eyepiece solar filters – that got used a lot more than I like to think about! My wife gave me an 8″ Dobsonian telescope for my 40th birthday, that came with a not-scary-at-all solar filter; that telescope has seen a LOT of use in 16 years – so much so, it’s … Continue reading →

Happy Hundredth, Mildred!

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This entry is part 18 of 63 in the series Diary

I got an email from my friend (and fellow planetary scientist) Rick Binzel: “I just learned that Mildred Shapley Matthews (the lovable taskmaster and technical editor who drove the Space Science Series forward for decades) recently celebrated her 100th birthday.” Funny thing was, I was just telling someone about Mildred earlier that day. She was the editor of the University of Arizona Space Science series of books for many years. In fact, she edited my very first paper – a chapter in the Jupiter book – and did a fantastic job, making my prose much better and clearer. She was also the very first person I ever met at the University of Arizona. I arrived late on a Saturday night for the Jupiter conference that was about to begin (this was May, 1975) and, seeing that there would be a walking trip up Sabino Canyon on Sunday morning, I managed to find the ride and met her on the trail. She … Continue reading →