Lowell Observatory definition of Lowell Observatory in the Free Online Encyclopedia.

Lowell Observatory, astronomical observatory located in Flagstaff, Ariz.; it was founded in 1894 by Percival Lowell Lowell, Percival, 1855–1916, American astronomer, b. Boston, grad. Harvard, 1876; brother of Abbott Lawrence Lowell and Amy Lowell. He visited Korea and Japan, where he acted as counselor and foreign secretary to the Korean Special Mission to the United States
..... Click the link for more information. , the American astronomer who popularized the idea that Mars might support intelligent life. Its original telescope, still in operation, is a 24-in. (61-cm) refractor; also located at the Mars Hill site are the 13-in. (33-cm) A. Lawrence Lowell photographic camera used by Clyde Tombaugh Tombaugh, Clyde William (tŏm`bô), 1906–97, American astronomer, b. Streator, Ill.
..... Click the link for more information. when he discovered Pluto, and a 16-in. reflector used in the visitors' night viewing program. Located at the newer nearby Anderson Mesa station are 72-in. (183-cm), 42-in. (107-cm), and 31-in. (79-cm) reflecting telescopes and a 24-in. (60-cm) Schmidt telescope used in the search for asteroids and other near-earth objects. Anderson Mesa is also the site of the Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer program, a joint venture of the Lowell Observatory, the U.S. Naval Observatory, and the Naval Research Laboratory. Many discoveries of fundamental importance have been made by the observatory, especially by V. M. Slipher Earl C. Slipher, 1883–1964, was a noted planetary astronomer who also worked at the Lowell Observatory. His many years of observations of the planet Mars were published in 1962 as The Photographic Story of Mars.
..... Click the link for more information. , its director from 1916 to 1954. By 1917 he had determined through spectroscopic analysis the radial velocities radial velocity, in astronomy, the speed with which a star moves toward or away from the sun. It is determined from the red or blue shift in the star's spectrum .
..... Click the link for more information. of most spiral nebulae nebula (nĕb`y

lə) [Lat.
..... Click the link for more information. then known. His discovery that nearly all these nebulae, now known as galaxies, were apparently moving away from the earth led to Edwin Hubble's Hubble, Edwin Powell, 1889–1953, American astronomer, b. Marshfield, Mo. He did research (1914–17) at Yerkes Observatory, and joined (1919) the staff of Mt. Wilson Observatory, Pasadena, Calif., of which he became director. Building on V. M.
..... Click the link for more information. work and the discovery of the expanding universe. Beginning in 1905 the observatory made a concerted search for a transneptunian planet, which led to Tombaugh's discovery of Pluto in 1930. Principal research programs involve the discovery and determination of orbits for new asteroids, a search for nearby stars, and the measurement of light and motion of close double stars, nebulae, and other galactic objects.