Sky Shorts: Our Red Planet fascination
Suzie Dills
For centuries, humans have been intrigued by the bright, reddish object that wanders our night sky, the planet Mars. We loved it, feared it, and hoped for signs of life. We even convinced ourselves that Mars was like our planet Earth, with ice caps, seasons, similar rotation, and it is also a rocky planet. This made it easy to believe that life emerged on Mars and we could visit someday, due to its proximity to Earth.
The first person to observe Mars with a telescope was Galileo Galilei in 1610.
In the 1800’s, larger observatories were built around the world and telescopes revealed a planet with intriguing surface features. In 1877, Giovanni Schiaparelli began mapping areas as seas, continents and “canali” (channels), which were mistranslated as meaning canals. Canals implied intelligent life built those waterways.