Martian canals

For a time in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was believed that there were canals on Mars.

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These were a network of long straight lines that appeared in drawings of the planet Mars in the equatorial regions from 60° N. to 60° S. Lat., first observed by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli during the opposition of 1877, and confirmed by later observers. Schiaparelli called these canali, which was translated into English as "canals". The Irish astronomer Charles E. Burton made some of the earliest drawings of straight-line features on Mars, although his drawings did not match Schiaparelli's.

Related Topics:
Planet - Mars - Giovanni Schiaparelli - 1877 - Charles E. Burton

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Some people went so far as to propose the idea that the canals were irrigation canals built by a supposed intelligent civilization on Mars. Percival Lowell was a strong proponent of this view, pushing the idea much further than Schiaparelli, who for his part considered much of the detail on Lowell's drawings to be imaginary. Some observers drew maps in which dozens if not hundreds of canals were shown with an elaborate nomenclature for all of them. Some observers saw a phenomenon they called "gemination", or doubling — two parallel canals.

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During the favourable opposition of 1892, W. H. Pickering observed numerous small circular black spots occurring at every intersection or starting-point of the "canals". Many of these had been seen by Schiaparelli as larger dark patches, and were termed seas or lakes; but Pickering's observatory was at Arequipa, Peru, about 2400 meters above the sea, and with such atmospheric conditions as were, in his opinion, equal to a doubling of telescopic aperture. They were soon detected by other observers, especially by Lowell.

Related Topics:
1892 - W. H. Pickering - Arequipa, Peru

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During the oppositions of 1892 and 1894, seasonal color changes were reported. As the polar snows melted the adjacent seas appeared to overflow and spread out as far as the tropics, and were often seen to assume a distinctly green colour. The idea that Schiaparelli's canali were really irrigation canals made by intelligent beings, was first hinted at, and then adopted as the only intelligible explanation, by Lowell and a few others. This at once seized upon the public imagination and was spread by newspapers and magazines over the civilised world.

Related Topics:
1892 - 1894

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At this time (1894) it began to be doubted whether there were any seas at all on Mars. Under the best conditions, these supposed 'seas' were seen to lose all trace of uniformity, their appearance being that of a mountainous country, broken by ridges, rifts, and canyons, seen from a great elevation. These doubts soon became certainties, and it is now almost universally admitted that Mars possesses no permanent bodies of water.

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Other observers disputed the notion of canals as well. The gifted observer E. E. Barnard did not see them. In 1903, J. E. Evans and Edward Maunder conducted visual experiments using schoolboy volunteers that demonstrated how the canals could arise as an optical illusion. http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/MNRAS/0063//0000488.000.html The influential observer Eugène Antoniadi used the 83-cm telescope at Meudon Observatory at the 1909 opposition of Mars and did not see canals, and the notion of canals began to fall out of favor.

Related Topics:
E. E. Barnard - 1903 - J. E. Evans - Edward Maunder - Optical illusion - Eugène Antoniadi - Meudon Observatory - 1909 - Opposition

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The arrival of the space probe Mariner 4 in 1965, which took pictures revealing impact craters and a generally barren landscape, was the final nail in the coffin of the idea that Mars could be inhabited by higher forms of life.

Related Topics:
Space probe - Mariner 4 - 1965 - Impact crater

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