CLEVELAND (CNS) — One more Jesuit has had an asteroid named for
him.
Father Chris
Corbally, a stellar astronomer at the Vatican Observatory, has had his name
attached to a rocky body in the asteroid belt that orbits the sun in slightly
less than four years.
The honor
was a surprise, Father Corbally said.
“I’m
not a kind of an asteroid guy” like some of his colleagues at the
observatory, he said. “For me it came as a complete surprise. That’s why
it’s kind of nice.”
The
particular asteroid, designated 119248 Corbally, is about a mile across in
size. It was discovered Sept. 10, 2001, by Roy Tucker, a recently retired
senior engineer from the Imaging Technology Laboratory at the University of
Arizona.
Tucker has
worked extensively with Vatican astronomers. His work included building and
maintaining the charge-coupled device cameras used for digital imaging of
celestial objects at the Vatican Advanced Technology Laboratory as well as on
telescopes used by Father Corbally at the University of Arizona’s Steward
Observatory.
Naming an
asteroid requires approval from a committee of the International Astronomical
Union. Once named, a short citation about the person being honored is published
in a circular from the IAU’s Minor Planet Center.
Asteroids
are small rocky bodies that orbit the sun. Thousands of them are located in the
asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. But some have orbits that
bring them into other locations in the solar system.
Born in
London, Father Corbally, 74, has been on the Vatican Observatory staff since
1983. He joined the observatory after completing a doctorate degree in
astronomy from the University of Toronto. He was vice director of the Vatican
Observatory Research Group until 2012.
Father
Corbally has a wide range of research interests. They have spanned multiple
star systems, stellar spectral classification, activity in solar-type stars,
galactic structure and star formation regions and telescope technology.
“I’m
very much a star man. But realizing that stars are in our galaxy, I’m also
interested in galactic structure and history of star populations in our galaxy.
My way of probing all this is through the individual stars,” he told
Catholic News Service.
The Jesuit’s
current research focuses on the characteristics of human sentience in the
context of evolution.
Research by
the Vatican Observatory has turned up at least 10 asteroids named for Jesuits,
including St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus.
Other
asteroids have been named for Father Corbally’s contemporaries: Brother Guy
Consolmagno, director of the Vatican Observatory and president of its
foundation, Father Richard Boyle and Father Jean Baptiste Kikwaya, astronomers
at the observatory, and Father Robert Macke, a research scientist and meteorite
curator for the observatory.
In addition,
asteroids have been named for Father George Coyne, a onetime observatory
director of who died Feb. 11; Father Christopher Claviu, whose mathematical
measurements helped develop the Gregorian calendar; Father Roggiero Boscovich,
an 18th-century mathematician; Father Maximilian Hell, who determined the solar
parallax from observations of Venus as it transited in front of the sun in
1769; and Father Angelo Secchi, director of the Roman College observatory in
Rome during the 19th century.
