Renata Steffens
Night sky near the equator. Photo: Sathish J for Flickr.com Four nuns who mapped more than half a million stars between 1917 and 1921 have been honoured with asteroids named after them. Astrophysicist Fr Michael Connolly PP Oughterard, Co. Galway, said role models such as these religious sisters “remind us that there is a very important responsibility to speak up for the creator and sing his praises”.
Two asteroids named after Srs Concetta Finardi (1896-1975) and Luigia Panceri (1893-1982) were announced in the International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) Working Group on the Naming of Small Celestial Bodies announced in the September 2024 bulletin. The first two sisters – Emilia Ponzoni (1883-1950) and Regina Colombo (1885-1953) – in the four-member research group had already been honoured in June.
Fr Connolly told The Irish Catholic: “I am sure that their meticulous work of cataloguing many tens of thousands of star positions on old photographic plates over many years, unnoticed, did not seem like working in the vineyard of the Lord. But every search for truth, in a spirit of service and not personal gain, is truly acceptable to God.”
The ‘nun-asteroids’ are located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, the same belt has already over 40 celestial bodies named after Jesuits and one Pope. Fr Connolly said that “immortalising” these religious people “as asteroid name-bearers” also reminds us to “‘muck-in’ with the often meticulous and unrewarding work of scientific research which reveals more and more his majesty.”
In the 1880s the Vatican Observatory led by Barnabite priest Francesco Denza took part in the creation of a Carte du ciel, a celestial map. The Vatican was then allocated a section of the night sky to analyse and catalogue. When Fr Denza died in 1894 the project stalled.
In 1909, Jesuit priest John Hagen approached the Suore di Maria Bambina Order’s Superior General looking for “two sisters with normal eyesight, patience and an aptitude for methodical and mechanical work”.
From 1910 two nuns and later four were sent to the observatory to map photographic plates of the night sky using microscopes. By 1921, the sisters had catalogued the position and brightness of 481,215 stars, and by 1966 almost five million stars were recorded worldwide for the Carte du ciel project.
“What they did was build onto an ever-growing body of knowledge of the heavens, that reveals the grandeur and majesty of creation in a way that the ancients could never have dreamed of. This should inspire even more admiration and gratitude to the creator, God, through his Son; sadly the opposite seems to be happening,” said Fr Connolly.