Mars: History of Exploration II

Geography 441/541
Geography of Mars
F/22
Dr. Christine M. Rodrigue

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration

History of Earth-based Mars exploration

 The telescope era
 Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
 In 1609, he built and began using a telescope
 He observed Mars in order to test Copernicus’ and
Kepler’s predictions that the planets should show phases
 His telescope was too primitive, so he honestly reported
he couldn’t see Martian phases but that Mars didn’t look
perfectly round
 For his defense of Copernicus' heliocentric theory
against specific orders of the Church, Galileo got into
trouble with the Inquisition and was ordered into prison, a
sentence later commuted to lifelong house arrest.

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration
 History of Earth-based Mars
exploration
 The telescope era
 Francisco Fontana, Italian astronomer,
used a telescope to observe Mars in
1636 and made a sketch map, the first
ones recorded
 He could clearly see that Mars was
in gibbous phase, as Copernicus,
Kepler, and Galileo expected (right)
 The "very black pill" he observed in
the center might have been Syrtis
Major – or a flaw in his telescope
(he saw a "pill" on Venus, too)

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration
 History of Earth-based Mars exploration
 The telescope era
 The phases business (images from www.astro-
tom.com)
 Moon: all phases (new, crescent, quarter,
gibbous, full)
 "Inferior" planets (all phases)
 "Superior" planets (only gibbous or full)

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration
 History of Earth-based Mars exploration
 The telescope era
 The phases business (images from www.astro-tom.com)
 "Inferior" planets (all phases: new, crescent, quarter, gibbous, full)

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration
 History of Earth-based Mars exploration
 The telescope era
 The phases business (images from www.astro-tom.com)
 "Superior" planets (only gibbous and full possible)

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration
 History of Earth-based Mars
exploration
 The telescope era
 Christiaan Huygens in 1656
saw a blank dot (dust storm?)
 In 1659, though:
 He saw a dark mass,
probably Syrtis Major
 He saw it rotated around
a N/S axis
 He figured its day length is
very much like Earth’s
 He left sketch maps,
including one showing a
polar cap?

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration
 History of Earth-based Mars
exploration
 The telescope era
 Jean Dominique Cassini
estimated Mars' day at 24:40
 He observed bright spots at the
poles and dark spots along the
equator in the 1660s
 In 1672, he and a friend
simultaneously observed Mars
from different places on Earth and
used parallax to figure Mars’
distance from Earth
 Applying Kepler’s 3rd law, he used
this Mars distance to figure out
how far Earth was from the Sun

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration

History of Earth-based Mars exploration

 The telescope era
 In 1719, Giacomo Maraldi (Cassini’s nephew), noted
changes in the white and dark spots
 He inferred that Mars must have seasons

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration
History of Earth-based Mars exploration
 The telescope era
 In 1783, William Herschel also saw these changes with an advanced
reflecting telescope
 Using rotation of light and dark spots, he determined Mars’ axial tilt at
~25, which is the mechanism for seasonality
 He figured dark areas were seas and light areas clouds
 He thought the polar light spots were thin snow and ice caps
 Faint stars that passed close to Mars were not dimmed, so he
inferred that Mars had a very thin atmosphere

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration

History of Earth-based Mars exploration

 The telescope era
 In 1809, Honoré Flaugergues spotted variations that he
described as “yellow spots” on the surface of Mars
 He had been trying to time certain small darker spots across
the martian disk, hoping to refine the estimates of Mars' day
length, when he noticed some of the features seemed to
move in a manner inconsistent with a solid feature anchored
to the surface
 He didn't know what they were but wondered if they were
some atmospheric phenomenon
 It may be possible that he saw one of Mars' massive dust
storms (though some argue that his telescope didn't have that kind of
resolving power)

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration
 History of Earth-based Mars exploration
 The telescope era
 As telescopes improved by leaps and bounds, sketches of Mars did, too
 In 1800, Johann Hieronymus Schroeter made drawings of Mars.
 These sketches are becoming closer to formal maps

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration
 History of Earth-based Mars exploration
 The Geographic Period: Telescopes plus maps
 Wilhelm Beer and Johann H. von Mädler collaborated to map regularly seen
features on Mars, thinking those might be permanent geological features
 They used the first “areographic grid,” which is close to today’s (1841)
 They also refined Cassini's refinement of Huygens' estimate of the Martian
sidereal day: 24 hours 37 minutes 22.6 seconds

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration
 History of Earth-based
Mars exploration
 The Geographic Period:
Telescopes plus maps
 The Beer and Mädler maps
and their areographic grid
mark the advent of true
Mars cartography and a
new era of Mars exploration
 We still use something very
close to their prime
meridian!

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration

History of Earth-based Mars exploration

 The Geographic Period: Telescopes plus maps …
plus speculation
 In 1854, William Whewell speculated that there might be
Martian life
 He wondered if there are greenish seas and red landscapes

 Geotidbit: Whewell was the person who in 1835 first coined the
word, “scientist” (instead of “natural philosopher” or “man of
science”) to describe someone, Mary Somerville, a geographer who
wrote the first physical geography textbook in 1848, a book used
until the early 20th century!

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration
History of Earth-based Mars exploration
 The Geographic Period: Telescopes plus maps … plus
speculation
 In 1863, Italian Jesuit monk Angelo Secchi drew a map and called
the dark areas “canali” (translatable as “channels” or ...”canals”)
 The dark triangle of Syrtis Major he dubbed the “Atlantic Canal”

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration

History of Earth-based Mars exploration

 The Geographic Period: Telescopes plus maps …
plus speculation
 In 1860, Emmanuel Liais suggested that the dark areas
might be vegetation, changing with the seasons
 In 1873, Camille Flammarion agreed that Liais might be on to
something, adding that maybe the red color itself is the color
of the vegetation (funny, given how red is assigned to
represent green in false color imagery these days!)

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration
 History of Earth-based Mars exploration
 The Geographic Period: Telescopes plus maps
 Richard Proctor projected the drawings of William Dawes onto a
stereoscopic projection using the Beer & Mädler grid (1867)
 He assigned names to honor famous Mars explorers
 He also pinpointed the prime meridian of Beer & Mädler to the crater we
use today (Airy)

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration
History of Earth-based Mars
exploration
 The Geographic Period:
Telescopes plus maps … plus
speculation
 Also in 1867, Pierre Jules Janssen
and Sir William Huggins
experiment with a spectroscope,
training it on Mars to generate
spectra of reflected light and
absorption lines.
 They hoped to detect water vapor
and oxygen but reported not finding
any

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration
 History of Earth-based Mars exploration
 The Geographic Period: Telescopes plus maps
 The Proctor toponymy was followed by others, including Camille
Flammarion's Mercator projected map of 1876.

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration

History of Earth-based Mars exploration

 The Geographic Period: Telescopes plus maps …
plus speculation
 So, by the mid 1870s, there’s all sorts of exciting speculation
about Mars, stimulated by the ever-increasing resolution of
telescopes: canali, dark seas, snowy polar caps, vegetation
 It was known that the opposition of 1877 was going to be one
of the best in decades, and everyone was looking forward to
a great viewing opportunity coupled with the great new
telescope capacity

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration

History of Earth-based Mars exploration

 The Geographic Period: Telescopes plus maps …
plus speculation
 1877 was a great opposition: Asaph Hall discovered the two moons
of Mars, Phobos and Deimos (Earth had one, Jupiter had four;
therefore, Mars HAD to have two)
 He had given up but his wife, Angeline Stickney Hall (a suffragist
and mathematician), kept after him, and he found them.
 In gratitude, he named the biggest crater on Phobos for her:
Stickney
 Interesting areotidbit: Jonathan Swift’s 1726 Gulliver’s Travels had
the astronomers of Laputa talk about Mars’ two moons!
 Another one: Voltaire, in “Micromégas,” a short story he wrote in
1752, had two aliens discussing the two moons of Mars!

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration
 History of Earth-based Mars exploration
 The Geographic Period: Telescopes plus maps … plus speculation
 The US Naval Observatory Telescope that Hall used (still in service)
 Phobos’ and Deimos’ orbits were worked out

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration
 History of Earth-based Mars exploration
 The Geographic Period: Telescopes plus maps
 1877 opposition was the basis of Giovanni Schiaparelli’s maps of the light
and dark areas of Mars … and those linear features he, too, called “canali”
 Note the new toponymy: place names from mythology

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration
 History of Earth-based Mars exploration
 The Geographic Period: Telescopes plus maps
 Schiaparelli’s map, different projection

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
Schiaparelli 1884

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration

History of Earth-based Mars exploration

 The Geographic Period: Telescopes plus maps
 1892 saw some important questions raised:
 William Pickering of Harvard was seeing these Schiaparelli
channels, too, but he saw one running across "Mare
Erythraeum" : How could a “canal” run across a “sea”? He
wondered if maybe the dark areas represent vegetation.
 Edward Emerson Barnard spotted craters on Mars. No-one
else paid much attention. He also said he tried and tried to
see all these canals and couldn't for the life of him.

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration

History of Earth-based Mars exploration

 The Geographic Period: Telescopes plus maps …
plus speculation
 1893: Someone gave Percival Lowell a book about Mars by
Camille Flammarion (la planète Mars): instant obsession
 Unlike most of us who get obsessions, he had $$$$$!
 He built and staffed the Lowell Observatory in AZ
 In 1902, appointed at MIT as non-resident astronomer
 He published Mars in 1885, Mars and Its Canals in 1906,
and Mars, the Abode of Life in 1908

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration
 History of Earth-based Mars exploration
 The Geographic Period: Telescopes plus maps … plus speculation
 Lowell published maps, with canals aplenty

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
Lowell 1905: Canali to Canals

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration

History of Earth-based Mars exploration

 The Geographic Period: Telescopes plus maps …
plus speculation
 Lowell began to encounter resistance from the increasingly
skeptical scientific community
 Alfred Russell Wallace argued the light spectra from
Mars showed no signs of water vapor in the atmosphere
and the place was really, really cold, about -35° F, so
Lowell's claim of water canals had to be "all wet” (1907)
 Svante Arrhenius argued in 1912 that Mars might be
covered with salts that change color with saturation and
desiccation: No life necessary
 Other scientists reported having trouble seeing canals

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration

History of Earth-based Mars exploration

 The Geographic Period: Telescopes plus maps …
plus speculation
 Lowell responded by turning to popular audiences, shunning
the peer review that is central to science
 Public lectures, popular magazine stories
 His stories became more extreme
 Other scientists began to shy away from Mars
 A few, however, were caught up in Lowell’s beliefs:
 Nikola Tesla claimed to detect radio signals from
Mars in 1899
 Guglielmo Marconi, of radio fame, also claimed to
have heard from an alien radio transmitter

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration
History of Earth-based Mars exploration
 The Geographic Period: Telescopes plus maps …
plus speculation
 The 60” Hale Telescope at Mt. Wilson turned up nary a canal
 In 1913, Edward Maunder did a psychological experiment
showing how the human eye tends to see patterns linking
random lines and circles and the farther the observer was
from the random pattern, the more likely they were to report
linearities linking things in the pattern
 Lowell died in 1916, knowing that the scientific community
thought Mars was not only uninhabited but uninhabitable
 A few hardy souls held out for canals until Mariner
 As late as 1962, maps used for Mariner mission planning still
showed canal-like streaks (Slipher)!
 Canals and the dying Mars motif common in science fiction
C.M. Rodrigue, 2022
Geography, CSULB
Canals in 1962 Air Force Map by Slipher,
Used to Prepare for Mariner!

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB
 Mars: History of Mars Exploration
History of Earth-based Mars exploration
 The Geographic Period: Telescopes plus maps …
plus speculation
 For a wonderful Google Earth Mars based treatment of the
whole Mars canals thing, check out the Adler Planetarium
exhibit:
 https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/4ALy3KSjVtBnJw

C.M. Rodrigue, 2022

Geography, CSULB