A Visit to Lowell Observatory
A daytime visit to Lowell is a
must-do for anyone with an interest in astronomy and is an exciting and
educational day-out for the kids too. There are several historic telescopes to
see, solar viewing and various interpretive tours and talks.
But if you like observing, it’s the
evening when Lowell really comes into its own. It wasn’t always that way. When
I visited Lowell for the first time in 1991, even the 24” Clark refractor was
closed and I had to content myself with a brief view of dull brass in the gloom
through the door glass. Back then, Lowell was a sleepy place with only basic
interpretation and outreach. Now, though, Lowell is one of the very best places
in America you can go to view the night sky through some fabulous and diverse
equipment for a token cost; read on to find out why!
History
Percival Lowell, a Harvard graduate
from a wealthy Boston family, is said to have developed an interest in
astronomy from a young age when his mother bought him a telescope which he used
from the roof of their mansion (called ‘Sevenels’
because there were seven in the Lowell family, including Percy’s sister Amy
Lowell who became a Pulitzer-winning Sapphic poet).
Lowell worked as a diplomat,
orientalist and author until middle age, then developed a passion for Mars and
the ‘canals’ ‘discovered’ by Schiaparelli. He ordered a 24” refractor from Alvan Clark and Sons (also from Boston) in 1895 and founded
Lowell observatory on what is now Mars Hill the year after, specifically to
study the Red Planet. After a brief spell trying for better weather in Mexico,
but finding only worse seeing, Lowell spent the rest of his life observing from
Mars Hill.
Lowell eventually wrote several popular
and influential books based on his Mars observations and much fanciful
extrapolation. Much of what Lowell wrote was basically fiction, but those romantic
ideas (though he thought them scientific) about an advanced Martian
civilisation dying on a parched planet kickstarted our modern obsession with
life on Mars and aliens in general.
Lowell died in 1916 and is buried in
a mausoleum at Mars Hill. The observatory went on to conduct less famous (but more
scientific) research, including the discovery of Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh and other
important discoveries and contributions by renowned 20th C. astronomers
like Vesto Slipher.
Lowell’s legacy continued to draw popular
fame into the modern era. In the 1960s, the Apollo astronauts viewed the Moon
with the 24” as part of their training and the big refractor was used for lunar
mapping too. Numerous celebrities and VIPs have visited the observatory and been
photographed with Lowell’s great refractor.
Today, Lowell Observatory is still an
important research centre, but most of its modern instruments are housed at a
remote mesa site off limits to the public. Lowell’s original observatory on
Mars Hill above Flagstaff is still very much open for business though … now as
a destination for outreach and interpretation.
Entrance to Lowell Observatory’s
historic Mars Hill site.
19th C. dome for the 24” Alvan Clark refractor: built by two clever bicycle
repairmen from Flagstaff, the Sykes brothers.
Getting There
Many famous observatories are remote
and challenging to get to, but not Lowell. The observatory lies five minutes’
drive beyond the edge of the town of Flagstaff in Arizona, atop a small mesa
set amongst pine forest.
Simply take the main route through
town, old Route 66, past the historic centre. Then, just before the road takes
a sharp left turn and dives under an interstate bridge there is a turn-off on
the right which leads straight out of town.
Keep right and follow the road as it
twists and turns up the hill with occasional glimpses of the white dome of
Lowell’s great refractor intermittently through the trees. After a few minutes
you arrive at the observatory gates. Parking is plentiful and free.
What to see
24” Alvan
Clark Refractor
This is the observatory’s most famous
feature and perhaps the most famous telescope anywhere: Neil Armstrong has
looked through it; Carl Sagan was photographed at the eyepiece. The reason is
that this was Percival Lowell’s own instrument, the one at which he spent
countless long nights studying Mars and mapping its illusory canals.
Lowell initially had the telescope
built and transported to Mexico, only later returning it to the makeshift
‘upturned wooden pail’ of an observatory – built by two local bicycle
repairers, the Sykes brothers - where it has remained for more than a century.
Nowadays the observatory for the 24” has the feel of a grand New England home,
with its white boards and entrance porch. The telescope itself has been
beautifully restored, probably to better than new, all silver enamel and
polished brass.
Amazingly, despite its historic
importance and magnificent condition, the 24” is open for public viewing most
clear nights. All you have to do is pay your entrance fee ($22 when I visited
for the fourth time in 2020) and amble the dark paths through the trees, up the
steps through the oak door and into the dome (ignoring, if you’re of a nervous
disposition, the eternal presence of Percy in his Saturn-shaped mausoleum next
door).
The interior of the dome is like no
other observing space I have experienced. The phrase ‘time capsule’ gets
over-used, but it feels like that. An old radio is gently playing Twenties
tunes and everywhere is bare wood – floor, walls, beams and rafters. The wooden
ladder up to the dome shutters is tied up with nautical ropes like something
from a tall ship.
Then there is the Alvan
Clark 24”. Its gigantic tube, riveted like a ship’s hull, sweeps upwards into
the dim rafters away from the original brass focuser surrounded by
brass-and-mahogany handwheels that click chains around to move the mount. Off
season you might have the eyepiece to yourself, whilst at the height of the
driving season the queue will extend right out to Percy’s tomb.
When it’s your turn at the eyepiece,
you’ll get a chance at a fabulous view, perhaps of the cratered Moon or Saturn’s
rings in close-up, perhaps of a star-burst globular cluster or the whorls and
knots of Orion’s Great Nebula. If you want to experience viewing through a giant
Victorian-era refractor, this is the best opportunity I know of.
Soon after it was restored, the
Lowell staff would move the Clark onto new targets several times in an evening
session and you could just join the back of the line to see something new. Now,
to preserve it, they tend to keep it set on and tracking a single target all
evening. You can still go back as many times as you like, though.
You can read a full review of
Lowell’s historic instrument and viewing through it here.
Approaching the eyepiece of the 24” Clark
…
Giovale Open Deck Observatory
There’s no doubt that the restored 24”
Clark is the highlight of a visit to Lowell at any time, but especially on a
clear night. Now, though, it does have some competition from an exciting and
newly opened attraction – the Giovale Open Deck
Observatory, opened for their 125th Anniversary in 2019. It replaces
the old star-party style collection of scopes they used to set up on the
walkways around the site.
They describe the Giovale
as ‘Stargazing Reimagined’ and suggest it has ‘one of the finest collections of
telescopes available for public observing’. They’re not wrong.
This completely new outreach-only
facility at Lowell is amazing and very cool. It’s located up a long and dimly
lit path at the back of the site among the pines in a very dark spot with
outstanding all-sky views. True to the name it is an expansive raised, open
deck, surrounded by lawns and set about with benches to just sit and gawp at
the majestic dark skies if you’re tired of eyepieces.
There are various interpretive
displays at the Giovale too, gently lit at night. But
if like me you’re a scope fan, the main attraction is an array of permanently-mounted,
large telescopes of various types to view through on every clear night. How is
this possible? The telescopes live in a substantial arched-roof building by
day, that simply rolls off at night.
The telescopes available for your
enjoyment include the following:
The signature telescope, one included
as a kind of Steam Punk homage to the 24” Clark, is a long-focal-length (F12)
8” achromat by the English brand Moonraker. The tube
is all glossy candy red (burgundy at night) and polished alloy, set about with
various finders and guidescopes. It really is a big
and beautiful thing (so much larger than my own 7” refractor) and needs a
sturdy Astro Physics 1600 mount to hold it steady.
Incidentally, Alvan
Clark and Sons once made 8” achromats as a stepping stone between their transportable
6” models (Lowell started off with one) and the bigger observatory refractors.
There is a beautifully restored example of an 8” Clark at Seagrave Observatory
in Rhode Island.
The Moonraker
8” at Lowell is mainly intended for lunar and planetary viewing, but with no
Moon or planets (most unfortunately) on the evening I was there, I had to ‘make
do’ with a big bright and sparkling view of one of my favourite objects, the
Double Cluster in Perseus, through a 31mm Nagler
eyepiece.
A TEC 140FL on an Astro Physics 1100
mount gives great low power views with wide-field eyepieces. It gave me a
spectacular full-width view of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), brighter and clearer
in the high dark skies than I’m used to back home.
A 16” Meade SCT on another AP 1600 mount
(have they been spending big or what?) is described as their ‘workhorse’
instrument. It wasn’t being used on the night I was there, perhaps because of
the absence of planets and Moon.
A 32” Star Structure Dobsonian, with an F3 Lockwood quartz mirror, on a tracking
platform, is in fact the largest aperture scope at Mars Hill. The big Dob’ is actually
surprisingly compact for such a large aperture and only needs a few steps to
reach the eyepiece, but it still gives the expected big-scope view. I enjoyed
views of M82 (the ‘Cigar’ galaxy): big and bright with the ‘z’ shaped central
dark lane (actually part of a starburst region) especially well defined, along
with hints of other darker zones.
If the 8” Moonraker
is a nod to Victorian astronomy, the two scopes at the back of the group use
the most up-to-date hardware. On the left is a 14” Plane Wave Corrected Dall-Kirkham
fitted with a MallinCam integrating video camera that
takes long exposures and automatically displays them on a big screen.
The MallinCam
gives a viewing experience somewhere between eyepiece and CCD camera – slew to
a new object, wait for thirty seconds and see an integrated view like a CCD
image! It produced ‘views’ of the Great Orion, Flame and Running Man nebulae
with structure and colour like an image but (almost) the immediacy of eyepiece
viewing. Impressive.
The final instrument to the right of
the 14” is another PlaneWave CDK, a 17” this time.
It’s equipped with a Shelyak spectrograph that can
show spectra on a monitor in real time for demonstrations of the principle
technique used by professionals these days.
Various lust-worthy instruments at
Lowell’s new Giovale Deck Observatory, including the
8” Moonraker.
Integrating video cam showing a
semi-live view of Orion’s nebula.
Beyond all those fantastic scopes, something
extra that I really appreciated at the Giovale is all
the space, deck and grass, where I could set up my tripod and camera for some
long-exposure photos of the dark sky. It’s a great facility all round and
should be a huge success for Lowell.
13” ‘Pluto’ Astrograph
What with two visits to the 24” Clark
and the Giovale Deck too, I’d already had a long and
enjoyable evening at Lowell. Then I spotted another path up through the trees
and followed it. What I discovered was that the astrograph used by Clyde
Tombaugh to discover Pluto in 1930 has recently been restored to the same
exquisite standard as the 24” and remains open for visits late into the evening
(though you can’t look through it – it’s a giant plate camera!)
McAllister 16” Cassegrain
Lowell actually has another outreach
telescope that they open up sometimes, a 16” F18 Classical Cassegrain built by Boller & Chivens in 1963. It
has an unusual, cross-axis half yoke mount.
The long focal length of the 16” makes
it suitable for planets and I have viewed (ironically) Mars through it, as well
as Saturn. It’s worth exploring to find it, especially in summer if the queues
for the 24” are too long: it’s behind the Clark 24”, hidden away at the end of
a path along the edge of the mesa.
16” F18 Boller
and Chivens Cassegrain at Lowell.
Lowell’s Mausoleum
Percival Lowell himself is of course
interred at Mars Hill. You can find his eternity home just to the left of the
telescope dome where he spent so many nights observing Mars through the 24”
Clark and dreaming of giant canals. It’s a peaceful spot, looking out at the
view from the mesa.
His tomb was controversial though. It
cost a fortune and the funds were embezzled from the observatory. His wife
designed it to look like Saturn because that was her favourite planet.
Nowadays it has a rather ugly roof over the special translucent tiles that give
the interior a permanent wash of blue-pink dusk, Lowell’s favourite time of
day.
Either side of the doorway are
poignant quotes from two of Lowell’s books, ‘Mars and its Canals’ and ‘The
Evolution of Worlds’:
Things to do at Lowell Observatory
The most obvious activities involve night-time viewing through
Lowell’s outstanding collection of telescopes, but there are others.
Solar Viewing
Most fine days, they set up solar scopes just outside the
visitor centre, for free solar viewing sessions that will show you any sunspots
and prominences on the Sun that day.
Daytime Talks at the Rotunda
The Rotunda building contains some interesting displays on
Lowell and Mars and also hosts various daytime talks and presentations on the
observatory and its history. Walking tours around the observatory also start
off from here.
Night Sky Laser Pointer Presentation
Every clear night, Lowell offer a demonstration of the main
highlights in the sky that night (changing throughout the year as the Earth
moves in its orbit, of course) – planets, stars, constellations and deep sky
objects - with a laser pointer. This is a really good opportunity to start
learning your way around the night sky if you’re new to astronomy and is
educational for kids too.
Solar viewing at Lowell.
Many of the observatory’s
interpretive programs start here at the Rotunda.
Summary
I’ve always enjoyed my time at
Lowell, but on this most recent occasion much more so thanks to the Giovale Deck Observatory and a sense of better training
amongst the interns and staff.
The observatory closed for the night
at about 10:30 pm and I drove out and down the twists of Mars Hill into
downtown Flagstaff. To get back to my motel, I had to turn right onto Route 66
and then under the interstate, then immediately make a U-turn in the parking
lot for a gun store. It was a manoeuvre that I suddenly remembered from my
first visit to Mars Hill in 1991.
That gun store hadn’t changed much,
but Lowell Observatory certainly has – even from my previous visit three years
ago. I had a fantastic evening at Lowell this time and it must now rank among
the very best destinations for outreach astronomy anywhere.
An evening’s viewing at Lowell
Observatory gets my highest recommendation for a great observing experience
under clear and dark skies for a very modest price. The new Giovale
Open Deck with its varied cluster of premium instruments is a resounding
success.
