Lowell observatory install#
Lowell observatory professional#

In 1912, Slipher helped install a 13,000 feet high telescope in the San Francisco Mountains so as to refine his measurements. Lowell’s interest in Mars, emboldened by Slipher’s results, intensified. are those of a mild but desert climate, such as Professor Percival Lowell has asserted exists there.” The Washington Herald, April 05, 1908. Slipher, “discovered evidences of the presence of water in the atmosphere of Mars.” Sometime later, on May 20, 1909, the Hopkinsville Kentuckian noted that Slipher’s observations, “favor the view that the whitecaps about Mars poles are composed of snow rather than of hoarfrost,” and that “prevalent conditions of Mars. Slipher (newspaper articles almost always identified him in print with just his initials) and his brother, Earl C. As early as 1908, Slipher found evidence through his spectroscopic techniques that Lowell may be on to something. Lowell’s chief pursuit with the observatory was to prove that there were inhabitants on Mars, and hired young Slipher to help him. Courtesy of the Wall Street Journal/State of Arizona. Percival Lowell, founder of the Lowell Observatory. As the Coconino Sun put it, the observatory, “is known and recognized all over world for its discoveries and correct calculations.” Dr. Percival Lowell, Lowell Observatory became one of the foremost institutions of astronomy during the early 20 th century.

Lowell observatory professional#

Slipher’s professional career in science began in August of 1901, when he moved to Flagstaff, Arizona to fill a vacancy at the Lowell Observatory. dissertation paper, The Spectrum of Mars, which tentatively identified atmospheric characteristics (namely, water vapor) on the red planet.

(1903), and Ph.D (1909) in Astronomy from Indiana University.

As biographer William Graves Hoyt noted, Slipher’s early life on the farm “helped him develop the strong, vigorous constitution that later stood him in good stead for the more strenuous aspects of observational astronomy.” Slipher received a B.A. Vesto Melvin Slipher was born on Novemon the family farm in Mulberry, Indiana. Courtesy of the National Academy of Sciences. Slipher’s name doesn’t get regularly name-checked as one of the greatest scientists of all-time, but his contributions helped to establish our current view of the cosmos. In fact, it was expanding and often pushing objects towards each other.

Simply put, by measuring the longer wavelength red shift (objects moving away) and shorter wavelength blue shift (objects moving closer), Slipher demonstrated that the universe was not static. Slipher developed spectrographic methods that allowed researchers to see a Doppler effect in the distances of what were then called “spiral nebula,” what we today call galaxies. Part of our understanding of the expanding universe has benefited, in no small part, to an Indiana farmer’s son named Vesto Slipher. So, how did we come to this conclusion? Blue and red shift. The prevailing theory is the “ Big Bang,” which, “At its simplest, talks about the universe as we know it starting with a small singularity, then inflating over the next 13.8 billion years to the cosmos that we know today.” A key component of Big Bang cosmology, “ Expansion Theory,” stipulates that the universe is expanding, rather than a static state, which accounts for the changing distances of stars and galaxies. Over the last century, astronomers, physicists, and mathematicians have helped us understand a more precise measurement of the size of the universe and how it has changed over time. The known universe is big insanely big! At a staggering age of 13.8 billion years, our observable universe has a diameter of 92 billion light-years. This article was originally published on the Hoosier State Chronicles blog on August 26, 2016.