Lowell Observatory
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Clarke Refractor, Lowell Telescope
Image credit: Tom Alexanfer
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An observatory, west of downtown Flagstaff, Arizona, founded in 1894 by
Percival Lowell. Its initial instruments were
a 12-inch refractor leased from Harvard and an 18-inch refractor borrowed
from John Brashear. These were replaced, in 1896, by a 24-inch Alvan Clark
refractor, which was temporarily erected at a site in Mexico for better
viewing of the December 1896 opposition
of Mars before being moved to its permanent
home in Arizona. The original observatory building at Flagstaff, housing
the 24-inch Clarke telescope, at an altitude of 2,210 meters (7,180 ft.)
on top of a mesa known as Mars Hill, is now a National Historic Landmark.
From here Lowell sought evidence of martian
canals (to support his thesis that Mars was inhabited by an intelligent,
technological race) and of a ninth planet. The latter, subsequently named
Pluto, was eventually found at the observatory
by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. Between 1912
and 1920, Vesto Slipher made observations
of the red shifts of galaxies which helped
lay the foundations for the theory of the expanding universe. Lowell astronomers
were also the first to detect the rings of Uranus.
In 1961 a dark-sky outstation was opened at Anderson Mesa, 19 km southeast
of Flagstaff. Since 1995 this has been the site of the Navy Prototype Optical
Interferometer, a joint project of the Naval Research Laboratory, the US
Naval Observatory, and Lowell Observatory.
External link
Lowell Observatory homepage
Related category
• OBSERVATORIES
AND TELESCOPES
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