Overlooking the fair city of Flagstaff is Lowell Observatory, perched atop Mars Hill. The founder of the Observatory, Percival Lowell, believed based on changing observations of the planet, that it was occupied by a technologically adept civilization, one which had established canals to route water from its own ice caps to fields further away. He was a wealthy mathematician turned diplomat who had the means to establish his own private observatory, and needed a place which was dry, dark, and high. Flagstaff was ideal. The inspiring early observations of Mars later proved problematic and the conclusion wholly wrong, but the Observatory has done great work over the years since 1894.. It was featured in Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, as the place where Vesto Slipher discovered that galaxies were moving (and more quickly with their distance from Earth), as well as the site of Pluto’s own discovery. The observatory still does scientific work at its dark-skies campuses further from town, but the original site is by no means retired. Instead, it focuses on public education; I was there for four hours listening to lectures and using telescopes to look at solar flares and the stars. I also got to see the original Clark telescope, though it wasn’t available for viewing the night I was there. Sometimes the public can look through it, however.
- Follow Reading Freely on WordPress.com
Reading Now
-
Recent Posts
Categories
Blogroll
- Seeking a Little Truth
- All the Book Blog Names Are Taken
- Classics Considered
- A Great Book Study
- The Inquisitive Biologist
- Relevant Obscurity
- Trek Lit Reviews
- Babbling Books
- A Pilgrim in Narnia
- Mudpuddle Soup
- Gently Mad
- The Frugal Chariot
- One Catholic Life
- Gifted w/Thought
- Lydia Schoch
- The Classics Club
- Classical Carousel
- Fanda Classiclit
Archives
Meta
great pictures and funny post! tx… of course they got bicycle repair persons to build it: they're the only ones who know how to lace wheels (it's round)! haha
Those were the days when bike repairmen could also manufacture airplanes!
It looks like you had a great visit. I remember watching the original Cosmos and this plane as well as Lovell being featured. So many important and fascinating things happened there. The acoustics of the library sound so interesting. I wonder about other buildings designed like this. I will do a little Google research.