Magnetometer

Magnetometer

Magnetometer Mascart Magnetometer, one of a set given to the Specola in 1891 by Fr. Lais; made of brass in the shops of Carpentier, Paris, with a silver inlaid Vernier scale. These instruments were used for the continuous recording of variations in the Earth’s...
Merz Telescope

Merz Telescope

Merz Telescope This telescope was the first telescope of the newly founded Specola Vaticana in 1891. It has an aperture of 10.2 cm and a focal length of 1.5 m, and was manufactured by G. Merz & Sons of Munich around 1865. It originally belonged to the Marquis...
Sisters Computer

Sisters Computer

Home The History The Exhibition Area 1 Area 2 Area 3 Area 4 Area 5 The Telescopes Pagina Test Sisters Computer Four Sisters of the Holy Child Mary – Sisters Emilia Ponzoni, Regina Colombo, Concetta Finardi and Luigia Panceri – did the painstaking work of evaluating...
Repsold Micrometers

Repsold Micrometers

Repsold Micrometers Once the photographic plates for the Carte du Ciel program were taken, the positions of the brightest stars on each plate had to be measured, star by star. When the Specola moved to the former papal villa on the wall of the Vatican, a special room...
Chart from Carte du Ciel

Chart from Carte du Ciel

Chart from Carte du Ciel The Carte du Ciel was a photographic atlas of the sky, with each photographic plate covering an area of the sky two degrees square. The Vatican was assigned a region in the northern sky, and this image is a print of the plate centered at 0 hrs...