Next step on the trip was the Lowell Observatory in
Flagstaff. Bruce is an avid star gazer so he was pretty excited about this
visit.
I have to give a little history on the observatory first. It’s
one of the oldest in the country, established in 1894. It was there that the
formally-known-as-planet Pluto was discovered back in the 1930s.
They had a guided tour so we joined in. First they talked
about Percival Lowell of the Boston Lowells. Apparently they are Boston Brahmins,
having arrived in the 1600s, long history and gobs of money. They were a pretty
prominent family in New England; descendants included mayors, a civil war
general, a lot of judges, the founder of WGBH, a British Countess, authors,
poets, military men, bankers, and Dick Cheney. Yep good old Dicky.
The guide then talked about his wife Constance and I had the
feeling that the long feud with her is still fresh in the minds of the
astronomers. Apparently the woman was bat-shit crazy (often pretending she was
blind) and just plain nasty. After her husband died she felt that it wasn’t
fair that the observatory received more of her husband’s estate than her and
started a 10-year court battle. Eventually she lost but over half of the Lowell’s
bequeath was used up in court costs. She also tried to influence the naming of
Pluto to no avail. She even tried to block his wish to be buried on this site. There was one nice thing she did. She had Lowell design and build
the Saturn building that became the library for a number of years. It’s very
beautiful inside, with typical wooden library ladders and lots of wood shelves. |
| The big boy |
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| Bruce having a peek |
We then made our way to the main observatory, there are
actually 3 in the Flagstaff area. These days it’s only used for a public
education tool because the town is too bright for scientific research. They
operate many observatories out in the desert now. The main building houses the
original 24-inch Clark Refracting Telescope built in 1896. According to our
guide Lowell had it shipped to Flagstaff, set it up and then decided he didn’t
like the area. So it was packed up again, taken down to Mexico City, unpacked, and set
up. Again, he didn’t like the area, so it was packed up and shipped back to
Flagstaff. It was in operation for one day in Mexico! They have proof of this
story because when it was finally cleaned there was dirt local to the Mexican
location in the telescope. Must be nice to have all that money to just move a
massive telescope on a whim!
According to our guide, when the telescope was set up there
wasn’t a building yet to house it. One day Lowell was in town and met two
bicycle mechanics/designers, brothers Stanley & Geoffrey Sykes and asked
them to build the observatory. Yes, bicycle designers. With another partner
Edward Mills they built quite a spectacular building. It has an unusual roof so
they could use local ponderosa pine. I loved that the roof rotates on Ford
tires installed in 1957.
 |
| The Garden Gnome |
This wasn’t the telescope that they discovered Pluto with
though. That one is out pretending to be a garden gnome, having been retired
many years ago. It’s rather unspectacular for such a scientific discovery. But
looks are in the eye of the beholder and I’m not that beholding to anything
that involves astrology. I was there for Bruce.
One thing that I did find amusing. As the guide was touting
all the spectacular discoveries at Lowell, I got a little bristled over our own
little observatory here called Palomar. Funny how you get defensive about your home
turf. Honestly, I couldn’t even tell you what Palomar has discovered but it is our observatory by gum!
Well I did a little reading on Palomar when I got back. Apparently
the 48-inch Oschin Telescope at Palomar (the largest in the world for 45 years)
was used to discover the dwarf plant Eris which triggered the discussions in
the international astronomy community that led to the declassification of
Pluto. Ha! Take that Lowell!
After the tour we drove back down the hill into town and
found our hotel for the night. I was pleasantly surprised because it was a just
a Days Inn. The room was typical for a Days Inn but the lobby was large and bright
and they even had a gym, not that I used it, but I could have. We were pretty
beat so we ordered Chinese delivery and relaxed until it was time to go back to
the observatory for the night show. That was another surprise, I haven’t
ordered Chinese delivery since I lived in Brockville in the 70s, didn’t know
that restaurants did that anymore.
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| Lowell Mausoleum |
The night show. Yeah...that was interesting. I did like the
two lectures that we attended but standing in line to see a little white blob
with a little white ring around it—Saturn if you hadn’t guessed—wasn’t my idea
of a good time, but Bruce loved it! I did have to say though that the old
telescope was thing of beauty so the trip wasn’t all that bad. We also looked
at other blobs in the sky and Mars, which was a red blob. Bruce could tell you
more but he’s not the one doing the writing is he?
What I did find fascinating was all the people that were
there and they do these events every night, wind permitting. There are a lot of
people interested in astronomy. I find it interesting too but I just have such
a short attention span, I can only look at blobs in the sky for so long.
So that was my day at the observatory. And thank you Wikipedia for all the background information.
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