he sent an assistant out here, andrew douglas. he tested sites around the territory and chose flagstaff and flagstaff very dark skies. it was at a high elevation, 7000 feet. the higher the elevation, less air you have to look through and, the less distortion you get, because air is kind of like, you know, a swimming pool. when you open your eyes in a swimming pool, everything's kind of fuzzy because the water is bending. light air does the same thing. so the more air you're looking through, the more distorted stars are going to. and so the higher you go, the less area flick through. so there's some higher elevation, dark skies here is a great location. you drive around in flagstaff, you look up on what's called mars hill, where lobes water is located, and you see the of the telescope standing 40 feet tall like a big birthday cake on top of the hill. and so percival lowell decided to set observatory up in here in 1894. and in 1896 had this telescope build a 24 inch diameter, 32 foot long refracting telescope, refracting telescope m