Nuns Helped Map Close To Half A Million Stars In The Early 20th Century After The Vatican Recruited Them
In the past, women were often underappreciated for their contributions to science and technology, including early women astronomers.
But now, four nuns are being recognized for helping to map and catalog half a million stars in the early 20th century.
The Vatican recruited four nuns, Sisters Emilia Ponzoni, Regina Colombo, Concetta Finardi, and Luigia Panceri, to measure and map stars from plate-glass photographs. For 11 years, they diligently cataloged the brightness and locations of 481,215 stars.
Images of the nuns have appeared in books about the history of astronomy, but their identities were unknown. Finally, their accomplishments were recognized in 2016, after Father Sabino Maffeo, a Jesuit priest who works at the Vatican Observatory, discovered their names while organizing papers for the archives.
The Vatican Observatory is one of the oldest observatories in the world. Its roots date back to the 16th century and the reform of the Gregorian calendar.
The project that the nuns undertook was a huge scientific breakthrough. In April 1887, 56 scientists from 19 different countries met up in Paris to practice astrophotography. They planned to use 22,000 photographic plates to map the entire sky.
Institutions across Europe and the United States, including the Vatican Observatory, divided the work. They each had a specific zone of the sky to study.
Male astronomers depended on women to do all the cataloging, calculating, and processing while they got the credit for leading the project. The women did this labor for low wages.
For example, Edward Charles Pickering, the director of the Harvard Observatory, hired “Pickering’s Harem,” a group of smart young women, to do the star cataloging for him. Those women were only acknowledged for their contributions recently.
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In the early 20th century, Jesuit Father John Hagen, the leader of the star-mapping project for the Vatican Observatory, approached the Suore di Maria Bambini order for assistance.
The order specialized in education and nursing, but a pair of sisters were sent in 1910 to help out anyway—Sister Emilia and Sister Regina.
Another pair followed in 1917—Sisters Concetta and Luigia. By 1921, the four nuns had successfully cataloged almost 500,000 stars.
Overall, they played a big part in the creation of the Astrographic Catalogue, a 254-volume catalog of 4.6 million stars. The last of the sisters passed away in 1982.
In recent years, four asteroids were named after the nuns. The asteroids were discovered at the Mount Graham Observatory in Arizona, where the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope is housed. The observatory is about 200 miles southeast of Phoenix.
In the future, let’s hope that historical accounts will finally give credit to those who helped society advance to where we are today. The work of women and other underrepresented individuals should never go unnoticed.
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