Percival Lowell
January 10, 2012

http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S730.htm One of Lowell’s maps of Mars

         “Any of you familiar with the name, Percival Lowell?”

“No?  I’m not surprised.  However, a century ago his name was very well-known.”

 “Did they call him ‘Percy’?  I don’t really know, but he did have a younger brother named Abbott, and a younger sister named Amy, so I suspect someone called him Percy.”

 “His family was quite well off, and he went to Harvard University, where he graduated with a degree in mathematics in1876.  Can anyone tell me where Harvard is located?

 “That’s right, Cameron, Boston, which is where ‘Percy’ grew up.

 “He didn’t decide to study astronomy until much later, when he got interested in the planet Mars.  One person who caught his interest was an Italian astronomer named Giovanni Schiaparelli. Anyone remember another astronomer named Giovanni? 

 “Good, Cindy!  Giovanni Cassini.  NASA launched the Cassini space probe in 2008 to study Saturn.  It’s still there, orbiting the planet and collecting info on Saturn and its moons.

            “Meanwhile, back to Schiaparelli.  He was the director of the Milan Observatory and he saw what he thought were canals on the surface of the planet Mars. He drew some very detailed maps of these canals. 

 “When Lowell saw these maps, he got excited.  So much that, in 1894, he moved to Flagstaff, Arizona, and established his own observatory.  If you go there today, you can actually look through the same 24 inch refractor telescope that he used.           

“Time out.  What the difference between a refractor and a reflector?”

 “You guys are good!!  A refractor uses only lenses and a reflector uses a mirror and lenses.

 “Lowell collected so much information that he published three books on Mars, its canals, and even the possibility of life on Mars. In his books he described single and double canals, and called the dark areas where the canals appeared to connect ‘oases’, where the ancient Martians must have collected their water. We’d call them reservoirs. Because of him, for a long time, many people believed there had once been life on Mars.  Some people even give him credit for the beginnings of modern science fiction stories.  Edgar Rice Burroughs, the man who created Tarzan, wrote at least eleven books about  Mars, starting in 1912.  There’s even a crater named for him on Mars!

 “From 1908 until 1916, when he died at the age of 61, Lowell spent most of his time looking for a planet beyond Neptune, called Planet X. 

 “Yes?  Was Planet X Pluto?  No, it wasn’t, although Pluto was discovered at the Lowell Observatory by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930.  Astronomers had predicted Planet X based on the differences the actual and predicted positions of Neptune and Uranus.  Several things were wrong, however. They had the wrong numbers for the actual masses of Neptune and Uranus, and Pluto is too small and too far away to have affected their orbits in the first place.”

The moon is just past its full phase, rising around 6pm on Tuesday, and about 50 minutes later each day thereafter.  At that same time, both Jupiter and Venus will be visible: Jupiter in the south, and Venus in the west.  In the news this week expect to hear about a Russian Mars probe named “Phobos-Grunt”.  It was launched in November, but never got out of Earth orbit.  It is expected to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere Jan. 15^th or 16^th.  Most of it will burn up during re-entry,so don’t lose any sleep over dodging falling debris!!