Word: flagstaffs
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...near approach of Mars last summer was a sad disappointment to astronomers. A dust storm that veiled the planet's disk foiled the fanciest apparatus. But last week's meeting of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific at Flagstaff, Ariz, heard a few bits of Martian news that had shown through the dust curtain...
Working at Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Ariz., Dr. Tombaugh used some fancy apparatus: a Schmidt telescopic camera so sensitive that it could photograph a tennis ball, half-lit by the sun, 1,000 miles away, or a V-2 rocket at the distance of the moon. It covered a 13° field, 26 times the apparent diameter of the full moon, and a complicated driving mechanism swung it across the sky, fast for nearby satellites, slower for satellites farther away. On its plates the stars showed as streaks. A satellite, if one had been found, would have shown...
Last summer the apparatus was dismantled and shipped to Quito, Ecuador, where space above the equator can be searched between the altitudes of 300 and 1,600 miles. This region, which cannot be photographed from Flagstaff, is considered especially favorable. If the earth has small satellites, they will probably be found cruising low over Quito...
...Merle F. Walker and Robert Hardie, at the Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Ariz., measured Pluto's light with photoelectric apparatus. They found that it varied slightly in brightness and that the variations repeated themselves regularly, as if dark markings were passing across Pluto's disk. The period turned out to be 6.390 earth days, so Walker and Hardie concluded that this is the length of Pluto...
...than much smaller ones do; their purpose is to gather more light, making dim stars and nebulae bright enough to affect a photographic plate. Much the same result can be accomplished by amplifying dim light instead of gathering more of it. Dr. Albert G. Wilson, director of Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Ariz., believes that a 40-in. telescope equipped with a Lumicon will equal a 240-in. telescope in luminescence. The 200-in. Hale telescope on Palomar Mountain, the world's biggest, can be made to equal a 1,200-incher...