Georgia State University at Georgia State is split between physics and astronomy. Areas of research range from biophysics, condensed matter physics, neurophysics, nuclear physics, and physics education and innovative instruction. The astronomy program uses many observatories, including the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona and the Small and Moderate Aperture Research Telescope System (or SMARTS) in Chile, and the CHARA array on Mount Wilson Observatory in Los Angeles County, California, Hard Labor Creek Observatory in Rutledge, Georgia, and the Urban Life Observatory, all of which are operated by Georgia State. Astronomy is now also a partner in the Apache Point Observatory 3.5-m telescope. Biological
Percival Lowell drying planet. While this idea excited the public, the astronomical community was skeptical. Many astronomers could not see these markings, and few believed that they were as extensive as Lowell claimed. As a result, Lowell and his observatory were largely ostracized. Although the consensus was that some actual features did exist which would account for these markings, in 1909 the sixty-inch Mount Wilson Observatory telescope in Southern California allowed closer observation of the structures Lowell had interpreted as canals, and revealed irregular geological features, probably the result of natural erosion. The existence of canal-like features was definitively disproved in the