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When Guy Consolmagno went to Kenya with the Peace Corps at age 30, he was homesick at first, but soon found a remedy: He would go outside after dark and look at the stars scattered like diamonds across the night sky.
"These were the stars that I grew up with in Michigan. So I said, 'How can I be homesick? These are my friends'," he said.
Consolmagno, 71, now looks at his star friends from one of the most renowned observatories in the world. As head of the Vatican Observatory in Castel Gandolfo, Italy, he's informally known as "the pope's astronomer" and leads a team of priests and religious brothers who are also scientists.
