Travels Around Roma Part III: Castel Gandolfo

I am taking a Science and Religion class and my professor is a Catholic priest, so using his connections he took us to see Castel Gandolf and the Papal Observatory because we were discussing Galileo and his Inquisition by the Catholic Church at the time. The castle is located in Latium, in central Italy, and is built on the Alban Hills overlooking the crater lake Lake Albano. All this means that that from the observatory there is a good view of the skies with no light to interfere with the telescopes and the lake because of the high location. The castle first has an internal courtyard, and then a climb of stairs onto the roof where the observatory is. On the roof there is a great view of Lake Albano, which was formed from five volcanic craters forming into one big lake. After that we saw the telescope in the observatory and we had a Jesiut Priest show us how the telescope works and do a demo. And that about wraps things up. Pictures with captions...

This is the internal courtyard with a retractable roof. During the summer apparently il Papa (the Pope) lives in one of the adjacent rooms and the sounds of him playing the piano flood the courtyard. Apparently.

Here is my attempt at a panorama view of Lake Albano, which I have to say looks a lot better in person. The pictures slightly overlap so use your imagination to paste it together. Probably the best part of the visit although I would have liked to jet ski there.








Here is one of the Vatican telescopes from the exterior, on the roof overlooking Lake Albano to the right. The roof rotates through a rope pulley system and the floor is automatic.

Here is a Jesuit Priest who is also a Vatican astronomer showing us how the telescope works. It is angled 23 degrees to undo the tilt of the earth and the platform underneath rotates at the same speed but at the opposite direction of the rotation of Earth so keep a constant viewpoint.

And here is a view of the retractable roof open for a view of the sky, although the telescope is only used at nighttime.

Here is a picture of a sunspot taken from the telescope, with the shadow of the telescope in the middle of the sun.

Here is a view from inside the observatory. The small small pillar of smoke coming from the city in the middle of the picture is Roma, according to the Vatican astronomer.

And here are pictures of the sunset as I was leaving.

And another picture just for fun.