the observatory was established in 1894, before arizona with -- was even a state. when lowell came out here, he had grown up back east and came from a wealthy family, got interested in astronomy, and realized if he was going to build an observatory back east, it was not ideal anymore because in the 1890's, you had the proliferation of electric lights that were shining on the skies and making it more difficult to see stars and planets and such. so what he decided to do was go to the american southwest. he sent an assistant out here, andrew douglas, he tested sites around the territory, and they chose flagstaff. flagstaff had very dark skies, elevation,a high 7000 feet. the higher the elevation, the less air you have to look through. air is like a swimming pool. when you look through a swimming pool, everything is kind of fuzzy because the water is bending that light -- air does the same thing. so the more air you look through the more distorted stars are going to look through. there are higher elevations, the dark skies, great location. you drive around flagstaff and you look u

went to meteor crater to see what an actual impact crater looks like, and then they went to lowell observatorythe mapping and see how these features are depicted on that because they are going to have to be able to read these maps and relate what they see on the map to real features. and then at nights, after dinner appear, the group broke up into three. each group went with folks. some stayed at the observatory with this telescope. some went to northern arizona university and there telescope, and then others went to the u.s. naval observatory flagstaff station about four miles from here. so there were three different groups using three different telescopes. the astronauts each looked to the telescopes to see the moon and where they would be going. in one day, they could see what an actual impact crater look like, how impact craters are depicted on that, and with the moon's impact craters actually look like. so the upshot is that that first trip was successful. nasa realized the value of training the astronauts to do geology and all of the future astronauts who went to the moon came here to fl