Strap in for something cool.
An astrophysicist buddy who happens to have an interest in the history of astronomy sent email noting that one of his undergrads suggested that Percival Lowell's sightings of "spokes" on Venus a century ago may have been due to a bad optical setup in Lowell's telescope causing it to act like an ophthalmoscope!
It seems Lowell was stopping a 24" Clark refractor (drool by the way) to 3" when performing planetary observations. He was using magnifications greater than 100x and had an effective focal ratio of at least f/120.
If you do the scaling, this is the equivalent of putting a tiny pinhole (less than 0.5mm) directly in front of the eye. If you want to experimentally verify this you will easy see structures in your retina. This is a very well known effect, but no one had invoked it.
Spurred on by this realization a few folks poured over Lowell's notebook and his health discovering
- Lowell "discovered" a synchronous rotation keeping the planet's spoke structure pointed towards Earth rather than the Sun (this is the probably the major reason why serious astronomers of the day doubted Lowell's observations - dreaming up a mechanism that would allow this was just too distasteful).
- He died of a cerebral hemorrhage. The normal cause is extreme hypertension which is often picked up in routine eye exams as it produces changes in the retina that are similar to the spoke pattern Lowell saw.
So it seems that a one hundred year old puzzle may have fallen with an unexpected map of the blood vessel structure of Lowell's retina. There is now work going on with a couple of ophthalmologists to see if they can watch the progression of Lowell's disease.
It is strange to note that much of the popularization of science in newspapers and some magazines assumed there was life on Venus, Mars and even the Moon during this period. It is staggering to realize that this is roughly the time when Einstein was working out Special Relativity. Of course the pseudoscience beliefs of today probably exceed the imagination of those of the last century.
6:58:17 AM 
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