features in enough detail so that they
might be published in books and
newspapers of the day. The photos
made by Lowell and his assistants
electrified the public as well as the
scientific community.
Here however, Percival Lowell made
an error that has sullied his reputation
as a scientist and astronomer. Rather
than offer the photos as a scientific
achievement in and of themselves,
Lowell insisted that the photos
provided evidence for the existence
of the Martian canals and the Dying
Planet hypothesis.
Lowell’s scientific critics treated his
ideas respectfully, exploring them,
trying to replicate his results and
offering challenges to his theories
based on new data and observations
from astronomers around the
world. By the end of Lowell’s life
in 1916, it was clear to most of the
scientific community that in spite of
Lowell’s magnificent achievements
in observation and photography – his
theory of giant canals on a dying
desert planet were just not true.
The popular imagination and press
were not as ready to drop the dying
planet idea, however. From H.G.
Wells’ War of the Worlds (and the
many films and radio plays based
upon it), to the John Carter Mars
novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs and
thousands of science fiction stories
and hundreds of films, Life on Mars
lived on in popular culture.
In 1964, Mars exploration entered
a new era; the Mariner 4 probe
flew past Mars for the first time
and sent close up photos of the red
planet back to Earth. These photos
were relatively poor by today’s
standards, but they represented the
very first time that humans had sent a
spacecraft to another planet and sent
back relatively close-up photos of the
surface.
The Mariner 4 photos showed a
dry, cratered world that looked far
more like the Moon than the Earth
– and the Dry Mars hypothesis was
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Nonprofit is giving historic telescope a second life
By DR. DANIEL BARTH
Guest Contributor
COURTESY OF NASA
Above, this image of Mars was taken by Mariner
4. Below, this image of a river bed on Mars was
taken by the Viking orbiter.
Percival Lowell worked with his assistant Carl
Lampland to capture the first high resolution
images of Mars.
born. Mars was now officially a
dead planet, waterless, and therefore
lifeless as well. Not only was there no
sign of any sort of life, there were no
indications of anything remotely like
canals stretching across the surface.
Even when the Viking spacecraft
— an orbiting photographic satellite
and a stationary lander — sent
photos back of dry river beds, ‘splash
craters’ that looked like a rock thrown
into a shallow mud puddle and
other evidence of a wetter ancient
past, these photos were dismissed.
Dry river beds could never have
held water because Mars was dry!
Evidence from the two Viking landers
that seemed to indicate the presence
of microbial life in the Martian soil
was also dismissed. No water, no
life! had become the official scientific
doctrine of the day. Percival Lowell
had been wrong, and that was that.
The 21st century again brought a
new era to Mars exploration — the
rovers had landed! The first primitive
Pathfinder rover touched down on
Mars in 1997, but the real exploration
began with the arrival of the Spirit
and Opportunity rovers in 2004.
Opportunity, which is still actively
exploring Mars today, discovered
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evidence that liquid water had once
flowed on the Martian surface, and
the Curiosity rover found chemical
evidence that water in the Gale Crater
region had been much like water
you might find in a lake or stream on
Earth today. Ancient Mars had been
“warm, wet, and habitable” according
to NASA scientists. The Dry Mars
hypothesis was officially dead.
Today we know Mars better than
ever before. It is a cold, desert planet
with oceans of water locked in frozen
glaciers beneath the surface. Mars is
a place where liquid water is thought
to bubble out and occasionally flow in
brief spurts across the sands of south-
facing slopes in springtime.
There are many mysteries to still
left to explore on Mars. Why did the
atmosphere become thin and cold?
Was there ever life on the Martian
Sky ’ s
Up
The 24-inch refracting telescope
commissioned by Percival Lowell
in 1894 from Alvin Clark and Sons
was one of the largest, and finest
telescopes of its day. This giant
refractor was more than 36 feet
long with a primary lens 24 inches
in diameter. It was with this great
telescope that Percival Lowell made
his famous sketches of Mars, and
through this great lens, he took the
first clear photographs of another
planet. The great 24-inch refractor
was also used to map the lunar
COURTESY OF Swarthmore College
surface in detail for the first NASA The historic 24-inch Sproul Telescope was recently relocated from Swarthmore College
landings on the Moon in the 1960s
in Pennsylvania to Northwest Arkansas.. The nonprofit Supporting STEM and Space
and it did early work on discovering Foundation is refurbishing the refractor with plans to make it the showpiece of an
exoplanets — planets orbiting distant observatory in the works for Northwest Arkansas.
STEM and Space Foundation acquired this great
stars many light years from our Sun.
telescope, which is now undergoing renovations
Today, all modern research telescopes are
and will soon be put back into service at a planned
reflecting telescope designs, using great mirrors
observatory site in Northwest Arkansas.
to gather and reflect light. Although the era of
It is a tribute to the Supporting STEM and Space
large refractors in science is over, there is a twin
Foundation, Explore Scientific and their many
to the great Lowell Observatory refractor – the
public and corporate sponsors, that this piece of
Sproul Telescope. The Sproul Telescope is also
America’s scientific heritage wi ll soon be back
a 24-inch refractor design, fully 36 feet long,
in service; inspiring young and old alike with
originally constructed by the Brashear Company
magnificent views of the Moon, Mars and beyond.
in 1911. Recently, the nonprofit Supporting
This panoramic image of the Martian surface was captured by the Opportunity rover in 2007.
surface? How did the planet’s climate
change over billions of years? Is there
still a water cycle on Mars as there is
on Earth?
Some of the Mars explorers will
Sky ’ s
Up
get to drive rovers, or command
photographic satellites orbiting the
red planet. But most of the Mars
explorers during this year’s great
opposition will be like you and me
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– sitting in our backyards on warm
summer evenings, looking through
our telescopes at a distant, cold desert
world that still has the power to fire
our imaginations and stir our hearts.
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