The Pope’s Astronomical Observatory: Gratitude for Creation and the Powers of Science

Vatican News

“We are really excited about the new images from the James Webb Telescope!” Brother Guy Gipsev Consolmagno, director of the Vatican Astronomical Observatory, said in a statement Wednesday regarding the unprecedented images of the universe that have reached Earth! July 12 This scientists date back to 14 billion years. “The images are wonderful, anyone can see for themselves,” he continues: “It is a tantalizing prediction of what we will be able to learn about the universe with this telescope in the future. These images are essential food for the human soul – you don’t live by bread – especially in these times” .

There is logic in the universe, but there is beauty too

The Jesuit also says that he is “happy with this success also for a more personal truth”. He explains that because astronomy is a small area of ​​research, astronomers know each other and that “many of the scientists who made the instruments and planned the observations” are his personal friends and he knows how hard their work and colleagues are to do. This amazing machine works.

Brother Consolmagno’s statement says: “The science behind this telescope, is our attempt to use our God-given intelligence to understand the logic of the universe. The universe wouldn’t work if it didn’t have that logic. But as these images show, the universe is not only logical, it is beautiful.” This is God’s creation that he showed us, and in him we can see both his amazing strength and his love for beauty. ”

The first researches of Jesuit Angelo Secchi

The director says he is surprised and grateful that God has given us such beauty to us humans, along with the ability to “understand what he did.” He quotes Psalm 8 which says:

“When I see your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have prepared;
What mortal man do you remember? And the son of Adam to visit him?
For you have made him a little lower than the angels, and you have crowned him with glory and honor.”

What particularly amazed the Jesuit world was “seeing the first spectrum of water vapor from the atmosphere of an exoplanet produced by the James Webb Telescope,” referring to the initial research of another Jesuit astronomer: “It has been about 150 years since Father Angelo Secchi placed a pamphlet in front of his telescope lens on the roof of the Basilica of St. Ignatius in Rome, and made the first spectroscopic measurements of the atmospheres of the planets in our solar system. I can only imagine,” he concludes, “how pleased he is to see how this science, which he pioneered, is now being applied to the Planets unknown to him in orbit around distant stars.”

web telescope

The James Webb Telescope is an infrared astronomy space telescope, a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). It was launched on December 25, 2021 from Ariane Space port in Kourou, French Guiana, and moved into solar orbit by an Ariane 5 rocket. The first images taken by the instrument. He said the photos are “first taste”.