3 ms·
Although I know the church has a lot of money, I can't imagine they dedicate a particularly large budget to the observatory compared to, say, a huge research un
by rconti 2y ago
Although I know the church has a lot of money, I can't imagine they dedicate a particularly large budget to the observatory compared to, say, a huge research university or a specialized scientific research project.
Openly musing, I'm just curious how they decide which projects to pursue, and how they contribute to the community? I know nothing about astronomy, but I imagine like many areas of research, they have conferences on various topics, so perhaps the VO scientists participate in conferences relevant to their research. Which again, of course, brings up the question "how do they decide what to research"?
- dragonwriter 2y ago> Although I know the church has a lot of money, I can't imagine they dedicate a particularly large budget to the observatory compared to, say, a huge research university or a specialized scientific research project. The VO has about the same share of the State of Vatican City's budget as NASA does of the US budget (but the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope has a separate foundation, largely funded by private donations, that funded its construction and funds its ongoing maintenance, without going through the general Vatican City budget.)
- mikhailfranco 1y agoIt's all about Easter. The church chose a mildly ridiculous, astronomically difficult and contentious definition of Easter: the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox. So it combines 3 complex systems: sun, moon and calendar. Religious extremism and pedantry increased the priority of accuracy and agreement. For some reason, Christians argued (fought wars) over the definition of Easter, and then regarded anyone picking the wrong day as a malevolent heretic. I imagine Easter could be one of the issues that led Swift to write the Lilliputian egg dispute in Gulliver's Travels.