Holy Smoke -- The Vatican Runs Quite an Impressive Observatory
In 1633, the Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church "persuaded" Galileo Galilei to recant his ideas that the Earth moves around the Sun --taking a firm (but incorrect) stand on the Ptolemaic - Copernican controversy of the 16th and 17th centuries. In 1992, Pope John Paul II officially declared that Galileo was right. From the time of Galileo to the present day, the Vatican has changed dramatically in its views and in the last couple of hundred years has embraced and funded much serious astronomical research. Continuing in that tradition, today the Vatican operates the 1.83 meter Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT) on Mount Graham in Arizona.
Comments:
There was a good article recently in sky and telescope about the vatican observatory.<br><br>I understand the astronomers are mainly Jesuits and there is a long line of contibution to science in general from Catholic priests and monks.<br><br>Some significant discoveries re the sun were made in the 19th century by a vatican astronomer.<br><br>I think its great not all religions are pushing extreme fundermentalist ideas like they do in the southern states of America. I've been their and seen it myself.<br><br>I was educated at a Catholic school in the late 1970's and evolution was taught as a undeniable fact<br>even then.<br><br>Phil Barker<br>Christchurch<br>New Zealand<br><br><br><br><br>
It is essential that ALL religions takes science seriously, or face loosing all but the most naive. Fundamentalist extremists in any religion are the single biggest cause of the world's most pressing problems, especially when they are running the country. Although the vatican scope research tends to focus on oddities, like off the main sequence stars with high mass and no spectroscopic metals, (I think they call them "boo variables"?) I am happy to see the vatican's attempt to contribute to astronomy. Perhaps they may take the scientific principle seriously enought to actually contribute something meaningful someday.
Lewis M. Rutherfurd, a pioneer American astronomer and instrumentalist, made many "firsts," among them the first published classification of stellar spectral types. Secchi, another great astronomer, worked at the same time and carried the speciality further. But Rutherfurd should not be forgotten in a simplification of history. <br><br>Another often misquoted "first" is Janssen's photography of solar granulation. But again, Rutherfurd actually was first.<br><br>I attach an image of Rutherfurd's largest telescope, a 13-inch refractor signed "H. G. Fitz."<br><br>--J. W. Briggs.
