The Day We Found the Universe - Marcia Bartusiak [42]
Lowell devoted the rest of his life to this infatuation. A rugged individualist and showman, he once listed his address as “cosmos” in a friend's guestbook. Though often charming when necessary, the patrician Bostonian could easily become enraged if either his opinions or scientific credentials were challenged. He eventually fired one charter member of his observing staff for continually insisting that the canals on Mars might be illusory after all.
Lowell installed a 24-inch refractor on Mars Hill. Though a modest-sized telescope (by then several others in the world had lens widths of thirty inches or more), it was still perched more than three thousand feet higher than the giant scope at the venerable Lick Observatory, and Lowell sought to outdo his competitor at every turn. Sometimes he tried too hard. Lowell and his staff occasionally reported on sightings—certain elusive stars or markings on planets—that simply weren't there. Lick staffers rolled their eyes in exasperation at the dubious announcements coming out of Flagstaff and hinted that there were defects in Lowell's scope (or with his eyesight). Before long a battle of the observatories ensued—California's top instrument versus Arizona's best. One newspaper headlined the unceasing skirmish as “The Strife of the Telescopes.”
In 1900 Lowell upped the stakes when he ordered a custom-built spectrograph that was an improved version of the one already in use at the Lick Observatory. He directed its manufacturer to make it “as efficient as could be constructed.” To operate it, Lowell hired a recent graduate of the Indiana University astronomy program, Vesto Melvin Slipher, who was grateful to be posted at one of the few observatories in the United States with a large telescope, along with high altitude, clear air, and good “seeing,” minimal blurring from atmospheric activity.
Lowell originally thought of Slipher's job as temporary (“I…take him only because I promised to do so,” Lowell told one of Slipher's professors at Indiana), but the young astronomer ended up remaining until his retirement in 1954, serving as the observatory's director for thirty-eight of those years. Lowell chose well. Slipher took a spectrograph intended for planetary work and with great skill and extraordinary patience eventually extended the observatory's celestial scans far beyond the solar system. Instead of discerning new features on Mars, the observatory's raison d'être, he found himself revealing a surprising facet of the cosmos, previously unknown. He detected the very first hint—the earliest glimmer of data—that the universe is expanding, although it took more than a decade for astronomers to fully recognize just what he had done.
In the nineteenth century, with rural farms in the United States often miles apart, lit by only candle or kerosene, and no interfering glow from a nearby metropolis, the nighttime sky was breathtaking in its appearance. The Milky Way streaked across the celestial sphere like a ghost on the run. This sublime stellar landscape must have been a powerful lure, for many of America's greatest astronomers a century ago were born on Midwest farms, including Slipher. “V.M.,” as he was best known to friends and colleagues, was one of eleven children, and at his school in Indiana he displayed a keen knack for mathematics. Going off to Indiana University at Bloomington at the age of twenty-one, he earned a degree in both mechanics and astronomy. He must have had qualms upon arriving at Flagstaff in the summer of 1901. Before coming to the Lowell Observatory, the biggest telescope he had ever operated was a tiny 4½-inch reflector. He had certainly never handled a spectrograph as large and complex as the one he was expected to operate. It was a daunting task for a beginner. The young man struggled for a year to handle the spectrograph with ease. He even confused the red and blue ends of the spectrum initially, a scientific faux pas of the first magnitude. In distress, Slipher asked Lowell if he could go to Lick to get some instruction, but his boss firmly