Perth Observatory install a 16-inch telescope at the Observatory that was built and used by the University of Western Australia staff and students, as well as Perth Observatory astronomers. Harris then moved the astrographic telescope, which had been in storage since August 1963, to the new site after arranging its refurbishment; the telescope recommenced observations on 29 March 1968, taking second epoch photographic plates for proper motion studies. In 1968, the Lowell Observatory of Flagstaff Arizona USA, located a 24-inch Boller and Chivens telescope at the Perth Observatory as part of the International Planetary Patrol Program. The program was designed to collect
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