sep 5, 1877 - Opposition and Exciting Discoveries
Description:
Astronomers had been observing Mars for hundreds of years, always concluding that the planet was moonless. It was not until 1877, as Mars was nearing opposition—when it makes its closest approach to the Sun and is on the opposite side of our sky from the Sun, a great time for seeing Mars up close—that Asaph Hall finally spotted one. He discovered Deimos on August 12 and, several days later while observing Deimos, spotted Phobos on August 18. During that same perihelic opposition, Giovanni Schiaparelli mapped the features of Mars and observed the linear structures he named canali (”channels”). Public imagination ran wild with those canali, mistranslated into English as “canals,” and Earthlings began to wonder if they might have Martian cousins gathering around red-planet watering holes. After decades of theorizing about those features and what they meant for possible life, the canals were discovered to be optical illusions, the result of astronomers looking for features at the limit of visual resolution.
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Mars Exploration
This project focuses on the history of Mars exploration
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