Why?

For all of us who love our calling, it’s fun to talk about what we do. But it’s perhaps trickier, albeit equally or more important, to understand and discuss why we do it.

Lowell’s employees often speak of their mission as encompassing dual pillars of research and outreach, but they are, in fact, both related components of the unified goal of communicating science. Whether our audience is a professional astronomer reading an Astrophysical Journal article by a Lowell researcher or a 12-year-old asking one of Lowell’s educators about the workings of a black hole, the observatory communicates the wonders of the universe and promotes scientific, evidence-based curiosity and thinking.

Any way you choose to interact with Lowell Observatory, the goal is to have you come away with the simple pleasure of knowing something you didn’t before, such as a perspective or idea about our universe that provides you with a new insight into how this vast physical system works.

Those at Lowell want you to feel curious. You don’t need to visit the observatory or read a research paper to find out the mass of Jupiter or to get a list of the names of all the planets; you can get this information off the internet. More important is wondering about the greater whole that might come into focus after learning about the smaller parts. What can humans deduce from the store of knowledge with which we’ve armed ourselves?

Lowell Observatory wants everyone to feel comfortable with the unfamiliar. What we know about the universe pales in comparison to what we don’t. We live in a cosmic sea of uncertainty, a universe governed by the strikingly counterintuitive rules of relativity and quantum mechanics. It’s a place where our perceptions are often well out of sync with reality. However, all too often, our public discourse and policy decisions are ruled by absolute certainty in the correctness of our point of view and the feeling that those who hold different points of view are idiots — or, worse, enemies.

Science, in contrast, is about deeply exploring data, taking pleasure in the power of codifying and understanding physical principles in the beautiful language of mathematics, and maintaining open-mindedness to challenges to long-held beliefs. Imagine the beauty of a world in which all of us do not reject the unfamiliar, but instead embrace it.

And Lowell Observatory wants everyone to feel humble. A good scientist should always hold the sentence, “I might be wrong,” front and center in their mind. Experiencing the universe in all its vast weirdness encourages us to wonder, to feel humble, and to be willing to change our minds when the data demand that we do.

Some years back, an email arrived from a mom in a state far from Arizona. She and her family had visited Lowell, and afterward, their son was so excited by what he had experienced that he promptly went home and wrote a school report about Clyde Tombaugh and his discovery of Pluto. She wrote in her email that Lowell educators had “amazed, challenged, and opened a young mind.”

That is why we do what we do. For young and old, amateur astronomers and professionals, everyone who wonders about the incredible sights that wheel overhead every night, we want to amaze and challenge, and to show how much fun it is to be part of the uncertainty and excitement of discovery.

And this is not merely doing well by doing good. In today’s rapidly evolving, technical, and often fraught world, it is a societal and national imperative. We welcome all to join us on the journey.