Benedict XVI appointed Jesuit Father José Gabriel Funes as the new director of the Vatican Astronomical Observatory, replacing Jesuit Father George Coyne.
Father Coyne, a native of Baltimore, Maryland, had been director of the observatory since 1978.
The Vatican press office announced the new director on Saturday.
Father Funes, 43, is a native of Cordoba, Argentina. He earned a degree in astronomy from the University of Cordoba.
He studied theology in Rome at the Gregorian University, and earned a doctorate in astronomy from the University of Padua in 2000. Father Funes has done considerable research on disk galaxies.
I suppose it’s safe to assume that Fr. Coyne, who is 73, retired. Fr. Funes is also a Jesuit, and has been on staff at the Vatican Observatory (mostly, it seems, at the Arizona branch), since 2000.
Funes specializes in extragalactic astronomy. His field of research includes the kinematics and dynamics of disk galaxies, the star formation in the local universe. the relationship between gravitational interaction and galalctic activity.
He studies the kinematics of stars and gas in the inner regions of disk galaxies. By studying the bi-dimensional shape of the emission lines obtained from high spatial resolution, long-slit spectra along the major axes of disk galaxies, it is possible to put constraints on the mass of central supermassive black holes, which in the standard paradigm are believed to be nearly ubiquitous in galaxy centers and the engine of the phenomena related to the Active Galactic Nuclei. The goal is to extend demographics studies about super massive black holes in galaxies, in order to better define the relation between their mass and those of the spheroidal components of the hosting galaxies. This relation offers strong clues to galaxy formation and evolution. Moreover, a detailed study of the stellar and gaseous kinematics of Sa galaxies has shown an interesting phenomenon of bulge-disk orthogonal geometric and kinematical decoupling. This peculiarity suggests that the disk could be formed by accretion of material around the spheroidal component that we observe today.
‘Cause the Catholics are all against science and stuff. Told you.
(Meridian line at Santa Maria degli Angeli, the church in Rome, dedicated to the Christian slaves who died building the Baths of Diocletian, the site where the church was built. Click on image for a much larger, clearer version.)
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