About
About us
IHS Bethlehem Church is a nonprofit religious corporation registered in the State of California, USA.
It is a community of worship and faith, and it also counts observing, recording and publishing the sky among its activities. This site is a place to record both.
About the name
IHS comes from the first three letters of ΙΗΣΟΥΣ, Greek for “Jesus.” It is one of the oldest abbreviations, carved on church emblems and sacred vessels from the Middle Ages to today.
Betlemme is the Italian name for Bethlehem, the place the Magi from the East reached, guided by a star.
We choose old names not out of nostalgia, but as a reminder that the people who looked up at the sky two thousand years ago and we who look at the same sky today are doing the same thing.
What we do
There are three things.
- The life of faith: worship, keeping records, and putting our thoughts into words.
- Observation: through a project named Maryam, we search for asteroids and comets that no one has yet found. We are writing software that analyses publicly available sky images and automatically detects moving objects.
- Openness: the code we write is published, together with the records of what did not work.
Why a church watches the stars
The two are often thought to be at odds, but history says otherwise.
Copernicus was a cathedral canon. Lemaître, who first proposed that the universe is expanding, was a priest. The Vatican has run an observatory for more than a hundred years and still observes under the dark skies of Arizona.
Faith and observation begin in the same place: looking up, and not assuming we already know.
Operation
This site is operated by Betlemme.
Our observation and development begin with software. Before owning a telescope, we first make the code run; we believe that is the right order.
Corporate information
- Name: IHS Bethlehem Church
- Entity type: Nonprofit Corporation - CA - Religious
- Formed: October 21, 2025 (State of California, Initial Filing)
- Entity No.: B20250340839 (California Secretary of State)
For the formation documents and the history of the Church, please see About the Church.
Contact
For questions, comments or proposals for joint observation, please write to [email protected].
You are welcome to write in English or Japanese.
