Throughout history people have been drawn to the idea of “signs in the sky”— celestial portents of doom and destruction. Comets, for example, have often been viewed as bad news written in the heavens. People today are still drawn to the idea of signs in the sky; the internet is full of videos and web pages dedicated to such ideas. Here we have assembled a few resources related to this subject that captures the imagination of so many.
Biblical Signs in the Sky? September 23, 2017
Article (blog post)- 1700 words
- Level: all audiences
According to various sources, especially on the internet, the sky of September 2017 would re-present the scene from the twelfth chapter of Revelation—a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars—as the sun, moon, and certain planets arranged themselves within and around the constellation Virgo. This was supposed to be an unprecedented phenomenon. Christopher Graney analyzes these claims in this post on the Vatican Observatory’s The Catholic Astronomer blog. Graney argues that when we have an understanding of the motions of the sun, moon, and planets, and of what stars make up a constellation, we see in the sky of September 2017 something that happens every few hundred years, and that is of limited interest to astronomers.
Click here to access this article from The Catholic Astronomer, the official blog of the Vatican Observatory Foundation.
Looking for Wormwood
Article (blog post)- 1800 words
- Level: all audiences
“Is the Vatican Observatory searching for the star called Wormwood from the Book of Revelation?” This question was asked during the Q&A session that followed a talk about the V.O. given by one of the members of the Vatican Observatory Foundation’s Board of Directors, and Christopher Graney, writing for the Vatican Observatory’s Sacred Space Astronomy (The Catholic Astronomer) blog, answers it.
Click here to read this article from Sacred Space Astronomy (The Catholic Astronomer), the blog of the Vatican Observatory Foundation.
Nibiru, Kepler, and some basics on orbits
Article (blog post)- 2700 words
- Level: all audiences
This article from The Catholic Astronomer, the official blog of the Vatican Observatory Foundation, discusses the laws of planetary motion formulated by Johannes Kepler, and how they pertain to the supposed Earth-destroying planet Niburu. Author Christopher Graney writes that with a little application of Kepler’s laws, we can assess for ourselves the validity of claims about things such as Nibiru, and we can make that assessment with considerable depth.
Click here to access this article from The Catholic Astronomer, the official blog of the Vatican Observatory Foundation.
The Earth-Destroying Planet Nibiru! (and Johannes Kepler)
Article (blog post)- 2000 words
- Level: all audiences
Christopher M. Graney writes in the Vatican Observatory’s The Catholic Astronomer blog on what the work of the seventeenth-century astronomer Johannes Kepler (who put hymns of praise to God in his scientific writings) can tell us about the supposed Earth-destroying planet Niburu, and about things like Nibiru that generate interest on the internet. Graney writes:
It is unclear how many Nibiru enthusiasts believe it actually exists, and how many are just fascinated by the idea. I first learned about it from a neighbor—a very intelligent musician, director of music at one of the more prominent Catholic churches in my area (Louisville, Kentucky), who holds a doctorate from one of the best music schools in the USA. It is not that he truly believes in Nibiru, but he clearly finds the idea fascinating, and always asks me about it (in part to provoke an eye roll). But the fact is, he does not have a scientific education; he seems to feel that he is stuck with either believing or not believing what scientific authority tells him on the subject, and so he likes to play up the conspiracy theory aspect of it (“why are all these people going to the South Pole, huh? They’re tracking Nibiru, aren’t they?”). One of the janitors at my college is a little more serious in his inquiries. He just wants to know. “I hear about this stuff, but I have a grade-school education,” he said. “How do I know what to believe and what not to believe?”…
We astronomers might have to accept some blame for nonsense like Nibiru. We want to tell people about exciting, dynamic stuff—stars being born! stars dying! worlds and galaxies in collision! change! chaos! excitement! THINGS BLOWING UP!!! Science should be fun, right? Thus fun, exciting things get lots of emphasis in popular science. After all, are not thousands upon thousands of years of orbital stability the very definition of boring? And how boring are Kepler’s Third Law graphs? How boring is lack of change? How boring is reading some ancient Greek poet describing the very sky we see today? Perhaps it is at our own peril that we astronomers talk up the exciting stuff, and gloss over Kepler and stability and clockwork. And, of course, what is a media outlet like the Washington Post going to be more likely to talk about? Mysterious planets obliterating things? Or math and graphs and hymn-singing seventeenth-century astronomers?
Click here to access this article from The Catholic Astronomer, the official blog of the Vatican Observatory Foundation.
The Pope and the Comet
- Article
- 4 pages
- Level: all audiences
This brief article (published in 1908 in Popular Astronomy) by Fr. William F. Rigge, S. J., an astronomer at Creighton University, debunks the story that Pope Callixtus III invoked his papal authority against Halley’s comet. Rigge writes that “it seems that no article can be written on Halley’s comet without bringing in the oft-told story of the bull which Pope Callixtus III so ineffectually launched against it….” Rigge cites several pieces of evidence against this story, the strongest being that not that many documents were produced during the short papacy of Callixtus III, and Fr. Rigge was able to read them all. “It was an easy task for me to read all the documents of this pope,” he writes, “and I can attest from my own personal knowledge that not only is there no bull against or concerning a comet, there is not even a paragraph, nor a phrase, nor a word, which might be construed to refer to a comet.” Today the story is generally recognized as a myth, but as recently as 1997 a NASA news release about comet Hale-Bopp noted that “Pope Callixtus III excommunicated Halley’s Comet in 1456 as an ‘instrument of the devil’…”
Click here to access this article as printed in Popular Astronomy (courtesy of Google Books).
[Click here to download PDF]RiggeSJPopeComet
Nibiru, Kepler, and some basics on orbits
- Article (blog post)
- 2700 words
- Level: all audiences
This article from The Catholic Astronomer, the official blog of the Vatican Observatory Foundation, discusses the laws of planetary motion formulated by Johannes Kepler, and how they pertain to the supposed Earth-destroying planet Niburu. Author Christopher Graney writes that with a little application of Kepler’s laws, we can assess for ourselves the validity of claims about things such as Nibiru, and we can make that assessment with considerable depth.
Click here to access this article from The Catholic Astronomer, the official blog of the Vatican Observatory Foundation.
The Pope and the Comet
- Article
- 4 pages
- Level: all audiences
This brief article (published in 1908 in Popular Astronomy) by Fr. William F. Rigge, S. J., an astronomer at Creighton University, debunks the story that Pope Callixtus III invoked his papal authority against Halley’s comet. Rigge writes that “it seems that no article can be written on Halley’s comet without bringing in the oft-told story of the bull which Pope Callixtus III so ineffectually launched against it….” Rigge cites several pieces of evidence against this story, the strongest being that not that many documents were produced during the short papacy of Callixtus III, and Fr. Rigge was able to read them all. “It was an easy task for me to read all the documents of this pope,” he writes, “and I can attest from my own personal knowledge that not only is there no bull against or concerning a comet, there is not even a paragraph, nor a phrase, nor a word, which might be construed to refer to a comet.” Today the story is generally recognized as a myth, but as recently as 1997 a NASA news release about comet Hale-Bopp noted that “Pope Callixtus III excommunicated Halley’s Comet in 1456 as an ‘instrument of the devil’…”
Click here to access this article as printed in Popular Astronomy (courtesy of Google Books).
[Click here to download PDF]RiggeSJPopeComet
The Earth-Destroying Planet Nibiru! (and Johannes Kepler)
- Article (blog post)
- 2000 words
- Level: all audiences
Christopher M. Graney writes in the Vatican Observatory’s The Catholic Astronomer blog on what the work of the seventeenth-century astronomer Johannes Kepler (who put hymns of praise to God in his scientific writings) can tell us about the supposed Earth-destroying planet Niburu, and about things like Nibiru that generate interest on the internet. Graney writes:
It is unclear how many Nibiru enthusiasts believe it actually exists, and how many are just fascinated by the idea. I first learned about it from a neighbor—a very intelligent musician, director of music at one of the more prominent Catholic churches in my area (Louisville, Kentucky), who holds a doctorate from one of the best music schools in the USA. It is not that he truly believes in Nibiru, but he clearly finds the idea fascinating, and always asks me about it (in part to provoke an eye roll). But the fact is, he does not have a scientific education; he seems to feel that he is stuck with either believing or not believing what scientific authority tells him on the subject, and so he likes to play up the conspiracy theory aspect of it (“why are all these people going to the South Pole, huh? They’re tracking Nibiru, aren’t they?”). One of the janitors at my college is a little more serious in his inquiries. He just wants to know. “I hear about this stuff, but I have a grade-school education,” he said. “How do I know what to believe and what not to believe?”…
We astronomers might have to accept some blame for nonsense like Nibiru. We want to tell people about exciting, dynamic stuff—stars being born! stars dying! worlds and galaxies in collision! change! chaos! excitement! THINGS BLOWING UP!!! Science should be fun, right? Thus fun, exciting things get lots of emphasis in popular science. After all, are not thousands upon thousands of years of orbital stability the very definition of boring? And how boring are Kepler’s Third Law graphs? How boring is lack of change? How boring is reading some ancient Greek poet describing the very sky we see today? Perhaps it is at our own peril that we astronomers talk up the exciting stuff, and gloss over Kepler and stability and clockwork. And, of course, what is a media outlet like the Washington Post going to be more likely to talk about? Mysterious planets obliterating things? Or math and graphs and hymn-singing seventeenth-century astronomers?
Click here to access this article from The Catholic Astronomer, the official blog of the Vatican Observatory Foundation.
The Pope and the Comet
- Article
- 4 pages
- Level: all audiences
This brief article (published in 1908 in Popular Astronomy) by Fr. William F. Rigge, S. J., an astronomer at Creighton University, debunks the story that Pope Callixtus III invoked his papal authority against Halley’s comet. Rigge writes that “it seems that no article can be written on Halley’s comet without bringing in the oft-told story of the bull which Pope Callixtus III so ineffectually launched against it….” Rigge cites several pieces of evidence against this story, the strongest being that not that many documents were produced during the short papacy of Callixtus III, and Fr. Rigge was able to read them all. “It was an easy task for me to read all the documents of this pope,” he writes, “and I can attest from my own personal knowledge that not only is there no bull against or concerning a comet, there is not even a paragraph, nor a phrase, nor a word, which might be construed to refer to a comet.” Today the story is generally recognized as a myth, but as recently as 1997 a NASA news release about comet Hale-Bopp noted that “Pope Callixtus III excommunicated Halley’s Comet in 1456 as an ‘instrument of the devil’…”
Click here to access this article as printed in Popular Astronomy (courtesy of Google Books).
[Click here to download PDF]RiggeSJPopeComet