MG15 - Talk detail

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The work of Angelo Secchi led directly to the formation, less than fifteen years after his death, to the organization of the Specola Vaticana (Vatican Observatory), because his great repute as an astronomer representing the Holy See as a nation (independent of the newly unified Italy) demonstrated the political importance of a national observatory as a symbol of nationhood at that time. Ironically, the first project of the Specola was in astrometry (the Carte du Ciel project), rather than the field of astrophysics that Secchi had pioneered. However, with the expansion of the Specola in the 1930s, a Spectrochemical Laboratory was established that carried forth Secchi's pioneering work in identifying the composition of stars by their spectra.

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