Wonder Bound

An up-close encounter with the sublime beauty of the universe. As part of the Jubilee celebrations, breathtaking images captured by the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes are inaugurating the Visitor Center of the Vatican Observatory/Specola Vaticana in Castel Gandolfo. The observatory is one of the oldest astronomical institutes in the world, officially founded in 1891 by Pope Leo XIII but tracing its lineage to observatories established on Vatican properties beginning in the 18th century.

Organised in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI, NASA’s scientific operations center for space telescopes), the exhibition will transport visitors into the deepest reaches of space, among exoplanets and bright star clusters. The large-scale, full-color prints are paired with narratives from leading space researchers, including Nobel laureate cosmologist Adam Riess, astrophysicists Ray Jayawardhana and Rosemary F. G.Wyse, planetary scientists Massimo Robberto and Sabine Stanley, exoplanet expert David Sing, and cosmologist and former Head of Mission for the James Webb space telescope, Massimo Stiavelli.

Reminiscent of works of art in their colors and shapes, the images offer an opportunity to explore how telescope observations have advanced scientific research and expanded human understanding of the cosmos. Since their launch (Hubble in 1990 and James Webb in 2021), the two telescopes have delivered nearly two million observations of more than 100 million astronomical objects, providing new insights into a wide variety of celestial phenomena, shedding light on our cosmic origins and revealing new images of the infant universe.  

At the end of their exhibition at the Visitor Center of the Specola Vaticana, the images will enter the permanent collection of the Papal Palace.

Cosmic Cliffs (JWST) Image credit NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI