With support from the Vatican government, the scientists of the Vatican Observatory have a freedom to choose research topics not constrained by three-year proposal cycles or passing scientific fashions. As a result, their research topics reflect the wide range of interests among the staff and can focus on long-term survey programs and sometimes risky cutting-edge topics.

Among the surveys currently underway are participation in the Local Volume Legacy project which is a census of the local Galactic neighborhood in many different colors, including even the faintest galaxies; the validation and application of the seven-filter Stromvil system for classifying stars in clusters in the Milky Way; the identification and cataloguing of spectrally peculiar stars; and the measurement of meteorite physical properties such as density, porosity, magnetic and thermal characteristics. Each of these surveys has been underway for more than ten years, and has provided invaluable data to other astronomers and planetary scientists.

Among the cutting edge work being done at the Vatican include models for the stellar evolution of tidally stripped stars in binary systems; the characterization of meteor mass, density, and thermal properties from a statistical analysis of meteor light curves; and the development of a framework for observationally testing cosmological models that do not presume large-scale homogeneity, and thus go beyond the standard Freeman-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker interpretation of cosmological data.

Even beyond those subjects, research topics at the Vatican range from string theory and observing galactic clusters to the search for extrasolar planets. The Vatican astronomers come from nearly every continent and touch almost every field of modern astronomy.

more information about the research of the Vatican Observatory