Featuring Dr. Robert Janusz, and the latest news of the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope! Just for our paying members: on the next Full Moon (actually, the day after full Moon, this month), Sunday, February 28, we’ll be holding our regular on-line meetup where we get to know and chat with each other, and with astronomers from the Vatican Observatory. The cover of the 2019 Annual Report. To the left is Fr. Janusz. Click here to download a copy! This month will feature Fr. Robert Janusz SJ. Those of you who saw our 2019 Specola Annual Report will be familiar with his work, which he does in collaboration with Fr. Rich Boyle; he’s an expert in the reduction of photometry data, the measurement of the brightnesses and colors of stars. In fact his experise is in what the Europeans call “informatics”; he deals with databases, scientific software, client-server applications, GUI etc. He programs basically in languages based on the object-oriented paradigm and SQL. But his PhD — on this topic — is actually in philosophy! In fact, he worked under the Templeton Prize winner Fr. Michael Heller. His thesis was on philosophy of nature. He is interested in the issues of field theory, computer science and the “mathematicity” of the world (the ways that mathematics can describe the universe). Recognizing the split that has taken place in culture, dividing it into a humanistic and scientific sides, he tries to merge them, especially on the basis of ethical and theological global perspectives. What date? Sunday, February 28: this is the day after Full Moon in Tucson, because we are holding our annual Vatican Observatory Board Meeting on Saturday. What time? As before, these meetups will happen around lunch time in North America: in particular, 10 am Tucson time, which is NOON pm…
Full Moon-th Meetup: 28 February, 2021
