Life on Mars

Life On Mars

Percival Lowell was electrified by the announcement in 1877 by an Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, of canali on Mars. Schiaparelli had reported during a close approach of Mars to Earth an intricate network of single and double straight lines crisscrossing the bright areas of the planet. Canali in Italian means channels or grooves, but was promptly translated into English as canals through Europe and America, and Lowell found himself swept up with it.

Later, in 1892, his eyesight failing, Schiaparelli announced he was giving up observing Mars. Lowell resolved to continue the work. He wanted a first-rate observing site, undisturbed by clouds or city lights and marked by good “seeing”, the astronomer’s term for a steady atmosphere through which the shimmering of an astronomical image in the telescope is minimized. Bad seeing is produced by small-scale turbulence in the atmosphere above the telescope and is the reason of the stars twinkle.

Viking Orbits Mars. No sign of the fabled canals on Mars. Image by NASA in public domain

Isaac Newton had written “If the Theory of making Telescope could at length be fully brought into practice, yet there would be certain Bounds beyond which Telescopes could not perform. For the Air through which we look upon the Stars, is in perpetual tremor. The only remedy is the most serene and quiet Air, such as may perhaps be found on the tops of the highest mountains above the grosser Cloud”.

Percival Lowell built his observatory far away from home, on Mars Hill in Flagstaff, Arizona. He sketched the surface features of Mars, particularly the canals, which mesmerized him. Observations of this sort are not easy. You put in long hours at the telescope in the chill of the early morning. Often the seeing is poor and the image of Mars blurs and distorts. Then you must ignore what you have seen. Occasionally the image steadies and the features of the Planet flash out momentarily, marvellously. You must then remember what has been vouchsafed to you and accurately commit it to paper. You must put your preconceptions aside and with an open mind set down the wonders of Mars.