| Message:
et si on clique dessus http://www.google.com et bien ca mene a google mars!
From http://www.lowell.edu/AboutLowell/plowell.html
Percival Lowell was born in 1855 in Boston. He came from a well known family; his brother, Abbott, was president of Harvard and his sister, Amy, was a famous poet and critic who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1926.
Lowell graduated from Harvard in 1876 with distinction in mathematics. After working in the family business for several years, he traveled extensively in the Orient before finally deciding on a career in astronomy. In 1894, he founded an observatory in Arizona, initially to search for intelligent life on Mars. Atop Mars Hill, at Flagstaff's rarefied elevation of 7,000 feet, the sky and quality of astronomical seeing conditions were perfect for night observing.
Lowell spent 23 years intensively studying Mars. By viewing its surface through the 24-inch Clark Telescope, Lowell produced intricate drawings of the Red Planet, delineating hundreds of straight lines (termed "canals") and their intersections (which Lowell called "oases"). Lowell concluded that the bright areas were deserts and the dark were patches of vegetation. He further believed that water from the melting polar cap flowed down the canals toward the equatorial region to revive the vegetation. Lowell thought the canals were constructed by intelligent beings who once flourished on Mars. He published his views in three books: Mars (1895), Mars and Its Canals (1906), and Mars As the Abode of Life (1908).
Though he focused his attention on Mars, Lowell also initiated a number of other research projects. Perhaps his greatest contribution to planetary studies came during the last 13 years of his life, when he devoted much of his time and energy to his quest for "Planet X," a theoretical ninth planet. The search continued after his death in 1916 and led to the discovery of Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. Pluto, in Greek mythology, is the god of the underworld -- a perfect name considering planet Pluto dwells at the outermost reaches of the solar system. The ninth planet's astronomical symbol became PL, the first two initials of the name Pluto, but also Percival Lowell's initials.
Since his death in 1916, Percival Lowell remains close to the observatory he founded in 1894. A mausoleum, located on Lowell Observatory's Mars Hill campus, was built in his honor, and is where Percival Lowell is buried. |
Forum 
