Mapping with the stars: Nuns instrumental in Vatican celestial survey

[rug]

Members of the Sisters of the Child Mary use microscopes to review glass plates as they measure star positions. (CNS/Vatican Observatory)

Carol Glatz Catholic News Service | Apr. 30, 2016

VATICAN CITY Of the many momentous or menial tasks women religious perform, one of the better-kept secrets has been the role of four Sisters of the Holy Child Mary who were part of a global effort to make a complete map and catalog of the starry skies.

Up until recently, the women were no more than nameless nuns whose image has long been preserved in a black and white photograph that showed them wearing impeccably ironed habits and leaning over special microscopes and a ledger.

But now their identities have been pulled out of obscurity by Jesuit Fr. Sabino Maffeo, assistant to the director of the Vatican Observatory. He stumbled onto their names as he was going through the observatory archives, "putting papers in order," he told Catholic News Service April 26.

Sisters Emilia Ponzoni, Regina Colombo, Concetta Finardi and Luigia Panceri, all born in the late 1800s and from the northern Lombardy region near Milan, helped map and catalog nearly half a million stars for the Vatican's part in an international survey of the night sky.

http://ncronline.org/blogs/eco-catholic/mapping-stars-nuns-instrumental-vatican-celestial-survey