From the Field: Finding Links Between Lowell Observatory and the Museum

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The dome at the front of the Slipher Building is not actually a telescope dome, but the Rotunda Museum, which houses historic documents and instruments, including the equipment Tombaugh used to identify Pluto. In front of the Rotunda, a wood sculpture of Percival Lowell, who founded the observatory in 1894, points the way toward Pluto Walk, a scale model of the solar system leading to the dome housing the telescope with which Tombaugh first observed Pluto.

Pluto and I are just two of the connections between Lowell Observatory and the Museum. Lowell was awarded lifetime membership to the Museum in 1913. Kevin Schindler, the outreach manager at Lowell Observatory, has hung the certificate in his office in the Slipher Building. Kevin also has an impressive library, and he loaned me some books to read while I am at Lowell. The first one I’m reading is I Married a Dinosaur by Lillian Brown, wife of none other than Barnum Brown, the Museum’s famous fossil-hunter.

Photo descriptions:

  1. The wooden sculpture in front of the Lowell Observatory’s Rotunda Museum is of Percival Lowell pointing the way to Pluto Walk.
  2. Lowell Observatory features a scale model of the solar system with markers for each planet’s distance in the sidewalk and signs with fun facts. At the end of the walk is a stone and wooden dome housing the Abbot L. Lowell Astrograph, the telescope Clyde Tombaugh used to discover Pluto.
  3. The Abbot L. Lowell Astrograph, which Tombaugh used to discover Pluto, does not have an eyepiece. The smaller, finer telescopes below do. The astrograph holds a large rectangular piece of glass that is photosensitive, like film, and can take images of large areas of the sky.
  4. Percival Lowell’s lifetime membership to the Museum was signed by Museum President Henry Fairfield Osborn in 1913.

Photos courtesy of E. Rice.