Artist’s impression of an Eclipsing Binary (Credit: European Southern Observatory)
Sam Miller
The SaddleBrooke Skygazers Astronomy Club is pleased to host Father Christopher Corbally, an astronomer with the Vatican Observatory Research Group on Sunday, Dec. 7. The Program presentation will be at the DesertView Theater, 39900 S. Clubhouse Dr. at 7 p.m.
Father Corbally will describe how binary star systems obviously display different behavior across the population, but these two are “really weird,” and also different from one another.
TU Tau was long thought to be a regular carbon star, but it has a companion which is recently under investigation, thanks to a Pro-Am group. The companion turns out to be the first example of a “massive” Barium dwarf, caught in the act of becoming a Barium giant. The companion’s habit of disappearing requires close surveillance of the system.
HD 5501 is an unusual eclipsing binary with a light curve that does not repeat exactly from one cycle to the next. The system is under strong suspicion of harboring a hotspot on the secondary’s disk that shows dynamical chaos, and it defies the usual change of period with mass transfer for a reason that is becoming clear. Again, close surveillance by the Pro-Am group is being repaid.
Christopher Corbally is a Jesuit priest and an astronomer with the Vatican Observatory Research Group in Tucson, Ariz., for which he has served as Vice Director, and liaison to the Vatican’s Observatory headquarters at Castel Gandolfo, Italy. He is an Adjunct Associate Astronomer at the Department of Astronomy, University of Arizona, while ministering to a wide variety of people, including Native Americans. He earned his doctorate in Astronomy at the University of Toronto in 1983, and his research interests include stellar spectral classification, multiple star systems, peculiar stars, activity in solar-type stars, star formation regions in the Milky Way, and telescope technology. Father Corbally’s interest in issues of Science and Religion is long-standing. He is a past-president of IRAS, the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science, and co-founder with Dr. Margaret Boone Rappaport of The Human Sentience Project. Together they have a recent book, The Emergence of Religion in Human Evolution, as well as writing on humans in space exploration and colonization.
The SaddleBrooke Skygazers Astronomy Club meets monthly (and typically) on the second Sunday evening (7 p.m.) at the DesertView Theater. Star Parties are held monthly at the softball field parking lot. The next star parties are on Thursday, Dec. 11, and Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026, at 6:45 to 8:15 p.m. The public is welcome at both. Club and Star Party information can be obtained by emailing Sam Miller at twoyosemite@gmail.com.