From the Taipei Times: Seeking the ultimate among the stars.
As the pope slept downstairs, Brother Guy Consolmagno maneuvered the viewing deck into position, stopping when he reached the massive telescope pointing heavenward through the open ceiling.
"Anyone see Mars?" he asked the four off-duty Swiss Guards standing around him. They strained to find the bright spot that had poked out from behind the clouds just moments before.
"Ah, yes, perfect. There it is," Consolmagno said from behind the eyepiece. "Not bad, all in all."
It was just before midnight on a Friday at Castel Gandolfo, Pope John Paul II's lakeside summer residence and the home of the Vatican Observatory. The Swiss Guards had the night off, and Consolmagno, a 50-year-old Jesuit astronomer from Detroit, had invited them up to the viewing deck to gaze at something they won't see again in their lifetime.
All this month, Mars is closer to Earth than at any time in the past 60,000 years, shining brighter than any other celestial body except the moon and Venus. On Wednesday, at its nearest, Mars will be 34.6 million miles from Earth — and won't be that close again until Aug. 28, 2287.
All of which means lots of nighttime viewing activity for the pope's stargazers — the Jesuits who run the Observatory and who have battled to correct the notion, spawned by the Galileo affair nearly 400 years ago, that the Roman Catholic Church is hostile to science.The Vatican Observatory, founded by Pope Leo XIII in 1891, is one of their prime exhibits, generating top-notch research from its scientist-clerics and drawing academics to its meteorite collection, which includes bits of Mars and is considered one of the world's best. [continue]
Related links:
Vatican Observatory - peletier.co.uk
The Vatican's Eyes On the Heavens - space.com
Related Mirabilis.ca content:
The Pope's Astrophysicist