07/24/2018 – Ephemeris – What about those martian canals

Ephemeris for Tuesday, July 24th. The Sun rises at 6:20. It’ll be up for 14 hours and 57 minutes, setting at 9:17. The Moon, 3 days before full, will set at 4:25 tomorrow morning.

The greatest mystery of the late 19th and early 20th century of Mars was the discovery of fine linear marking seen by visual observers of Mars. They were first reported by an Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli in 1871 as grooves, canali in Italian. It was turned into canals by the English language newspapers of the day. Canals are artificial constructions. Thus one Percival Lowell of Massachusetts built an observatory in Flagstaff Arizona to observe and map Mars for himself, dying in 1916 still believing in an ancient martian civilization bringing water from the polar caps to the equatorial region by canals in order to survive. Alas, there are no canals. Mars is a barren world, whose secrets we now probe below its red dust.

The times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.

Addendum

The source if the images below is the talk “Mars 2018” I gave at the Betsie Valley District Library, July, 20, 2018.

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