Basic Astronomy
This device that allows observers to see distant objects - typically employing curved mirrors and/or lenses.
What is a telescope?
Jesuit priest who built an observatory on top of a church in the mid-1800's
Who is Fr. Angelo Secchi
Name of the Vatican's telescope in Arizona
What is the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope. (VATT)
The largest moon in the solar system, which is also larger than the planet Mercury.
What is Ganymede?
This star-forming region is visible to the naked-eye as the middle "star" in the "sword" of Orion.
What is the Orion Nebula? (Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976)
A group of stars that form a recognizable pattern or picture in the night sky.
What is a constellation? (An Asterism is also correct)
The German Jesuit astronomer who helped Pope Gregory XIII to introduce what is now called the Gregorian calendar.
Who was Christopher Clavius?
Home of the Specola Vaticana and the Papal Summer Villa Gardens
What is Castel Gandolfo?
These two solar system planets have no moons.
What are Mercury and Venus?
A region of gas and dust sometimes mistaken for a planet - often shaped like a ring or bubble.
What is a planetary nebula?
These solar system planets have ring systems
What are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune
This Jesuit built a pycnometer, a device to measure density of asteroid samples from NASA's OSIRIS-REx Mission in 2023.
Who is Br. Bob Macke, SJ?
The Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope's mirror was made using this technique.
What is the spin-casting method?
This tiny moon is the most volcanic body in the solar system, with hundreds of active volcanoes.
What is Io? (Moon of Jupiter)
This nebula in the constellation Lyra is visible as a blue-gray elliptical ring in small telescopes.
What is the Ring Nebula? (Messier 57)
This object contains 99.86% of all the mass in the solar system.
What is the Sun?
This Jesuit won the Carl Sagan Medal for Excellence in Public Communication in Planetary Science in 2014.
Who is Br. Guy Consolmagno, SJ?
Containing many pieces donated by the widow of a French nobleman in 1935, this is one of the largest meteorite collections in the world, with over 1100 samples of more than 500 different falls,
What is the Vatican Observatory Meteorite collection?
These tiny moons orbit within Saturn's rings, and cause tidal disruption of ring particles.
What are shepherd moons?
Viewed as a "guest star" in the year 1054, the expanding remnant from this supernova contains a millisecond pulsar at its heart.
What is the Crab Nebula?
These objects share the orbit of Jupiter at Lagrangian points - 60° ahead-of and behind Jupiter, and are the target of NASA's Lucy mission.
What are the Trojan asteroids?
This pioneering seismologist established the first chain of seismographs in northern California in the 20th century.
Who was James Macelwane, S.J.?
Launched in Paris in 1887, this survey would include 18 observatories from across the globe, including the Vatican Observatory, with the goal of creating a photographic map of the entire celestial sphere.
What was the Carte du Ciel?
What do Earth's, Mars', Pluto's and Jupiter's large Galilean moons all have in common?
That is being tidally-locked? (Same face always pointing towards the primary)
The iconic Pillars of Creation, made famous by the Hubble Space Telescope, resides within this nebula.
What is the Eagle Nebula? (Messier 16, M16)