Maryam
IHS BETHLEHEM CHURCH · A NONPROFIT PROJECT
MaryamSEARCHING FOR STARS THAT HAVE NO NAME YET
Maryam is a project to search the sky for small bodies that no one has found yet. Asteroids and comets. Small, faint, moving things.
This is not a business. It is the work of a church that keeps looking up, as a form of prayer.
What it is
The work has two sides. One is software: code that reads astronomical images, compares pictures taken at different times, and finds what has moved. The other is observation: pointing a telescope at a fixed patch of sky and recording, night after night, what is there.
For now, most of our effort goes into the first.
We look at the same sky again and again, in public survey images and on borrowed telescope time.
Observation is practice in waiting without assuming. No hurry; one night at a time.
The code, the records and the failures are public. Whatever is found belongs to everyone.
About the name
Maryam is the Hebrew name מרים. It was the name of the mother of Jesus. It passed into Greek and Latin, and in many European languages it became "Mary."
We chose the older form on purpose. It is not a translated name but the one that was actually spoken. It is honored in Judaism, Christianity and Islam alike, one of the few names that crosses all three faiths.
The Church has long called Our Lady the "Star of the Sea" (Stella Maris): as sailors steer by a star across a dark sea, she is a guide for those who have lost their way. For a project that searches for stars, no name seemed more fitting.
And read plainly in English, it suggests a phrase: Mary, I am. That is coincidence, not etymology. But it is a good coincidence, so we kept it.
Why a church does this
The Magi were led by a star. "We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him" (Matthew 2:2). Whatever that star was, a comet, a nova or a conjunction of planets, they read the sky and acted on what they read. That is not superstition. It is the beginning of astronomy.
The Church has a long history in this field, and not all of it is something to be ashamed of.
- 16th c.The Jesuit mathematician Christopher Clavius played a central role in creating the Gregorian calendar the world still uses.
- 16th c.Copernicus, who placed the sun at the center, was a cathedral canon.
- 19th c.The Jesuit priest Angelo Secchi was among the pioneers of classifying stars by their light (spectra).
- 1891Pope Leo XIII formally founded the Vatican Observatory. It still observes today, under the dark skies of Arizona.
- 20th c.Georges Lemaître, who first proposed that the universe began from a single point (later called the Big Bang), was a priest.
Faith and observation are not opposed. Both begin with the same act: looking up, and not assuming you already know what is there.
How it works
Sky surveys around the world publish their images: Pan-STARRS, ZTF, SkyMapper. Terabytes of sky, already taken and already public.
Take images of the same field hours or days apart and line them up. The stars barely move.
What moves is nearby: bodies inside our own solar system.
Check the moving points against catalogs of known objects. Most match. What does not is either an error, or something new.
Telling those two apart is the whole problem. Cosmic rays leave streaks. Satellites cross the frame. Sensors can produce false points that look exactly the same. The code has to learn the difference, and so do the people who write it.
The road ahead
- Write the detection software and test it on public survey data.We are here
- Rent time on remote telescopes in places such as Spain, Chile and Australia, and run the same code on images we request ourselves.
- Apply to the Minor Planet Center for an observatory code. That means submitting accurate positions of known asteroids until our measurements are trusted. It takes months; there is no way around it, and there should not be.
- Only then are discovery reports accepted.
What comes after
A new object receives a provisional designation. Once follow-up observations confirm its orbit, it receives a permanent number. Only then does the discoverer earn the right to propose a name.
The name goes to the International Astronomical Union's Working Group for Small Bodies Nomenclature. If approved, it becomes official and is never withdrawn.
This cannot be bought. Some companies sell star names, but such certificates mean nothing. Discovery is the only legitimate path, and it is deliberately slow.
If the day ever comes when we may propose a name, we hope to choose it in prayer.
Our promises as a nonprofit
- We do not sell stars.Names and discoveries are never exchanged for money.
- We do not hide.The code is public, and failures are recorded alongside results.
- We do not rush.We do not announce a "discovery" we cannot confirm. We follow the proper process, however long it takes.
- We do not keep it to ourselves.Astronomy has always been a field where amateurs make real contributions; many comets still carry the names of people who were not professionals. That tradition survives only as long as the tools stay shared.
God, who made the heavens,
let us look up again tonight.
Teach us to wait, and not to assume we already know.
Mary, Star of the Sea,
be a guide for all who travel through the dark.
Amen.
Contact & collaboration
Questions, research collaboration and offers of telescope time are all welcome.
