The Spokes of Venus

In March of 1896, Lowell returned from his European adventures, determined to make what had been a temporary expedition in 1894 permanent. Having returned the borrowed 18-inch to Brashear, he needed a replacement, and ordered from his friend, the optician Alvan Graham Clark, a 24-inch refractor, for the sum of $20,000 (equivalent to about $650,000 today). At this point, after the horrible winter conditions experienced (by Douglass) in 1894–95, he was far from sold on Flagstaff as a suitable site for an Observatory, and had already decided to observe the December 1, 1896, opposition of Mars from Tacubaya, then a suburb of Mexico City close to the site of the National Observatory, where winter conditions were guaranteed to be better. Anticipating again using the same pre-fab dome used in 1894, in the interests of economy, apparently, he specified that the focal length of the new telescope be short enough to allow it to fit. This would prove to be a mistake, as even before the new telescope was delivered, the old dome had been discarded in favor of a new one Lowell was having built by Godfrey and Stanley Sykes, proprietors of a local bicycle and fix-it shop in Flagstaff. It was set up temporarily in Flagstaff, with a canvas covering, before being sent to Tacubaya for the opposition of Mars.