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Vatican's Celestial Eye, Seeking Not Angels but Data
from the New York Times (Registration Required)
MOUNT GRAHAM, Ariz. -- Fauré's "Requiem" is playing in the background, followed by the Kronos Quartet. Every so often the music is interrupted by an electromechanical arpeggio -- like a jazz riff on a clarinet -- as the motors guiding the telescope spin up and down. A night of galaxy gazing is about to begin at the Vatican's observatory on Mount Graham.
"Got it. O.K., it's happy," says Christopher J. Corbally, the Jesuit priest who is vice director of the Vatican Observatory Research Group, as he sits in the control room making adjustments.
The idea is not to watch for omens or angels but to do workmanlike astronomy that fights the perception that science and Catholicism necessarily conflict.
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