March 8, 2010 - Double Martian Birthday

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144 full-color pages
6" x 9", spiral bound
Art-quality paper

Weekly photo essay
Daily Moon phases
Night sky events
Space trivia
Holidays
Room for notes/appts

The Week in Space

March 8-14, 2010

Double Martian Birthday Born 175 years ago this week, Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiapparelli became famous for his telescopic observations of Mars in 1877. He discerned numerous linear surface patterns that he called “canali,” a word that means “channels” in Italian but was widely mistranslated as “canals.” Canals are artificial structures, and that is just what American astronomer Percival Lowell (born 155 years ago this week) believed he saw the more he observed and mapped Mars. He popularized a belief in the “Canals of Mars” and their presumed builders that would last for nearly a century. This Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image provides strong evidence that these gullies on a crater rim were formed by fluid flow of a natural sort, hinting that Mars indeed once had water flowing on its surface.

Image credit: NASA / JPL / University of Arizona