People's expectations for Mars often exceed what they actually see in the eyepiece. The Mars of everyone's imagination, combined with the brightness of the naked eye view, makes expectation exceed reality. Mars is a fairly small planet, only a little over half the diameter of the Earth (4,212 miles versus 7,917 miles), and even at a close opposition it is over 30 million miles away.

It's easier to see the surface features of Mars using imaging techniques that choose the sharpest images in a video and then average them. This is how the image at right was created. Compare that image with the National Geographic map below.

The difficulty of observing details on the Martian surface have led some observers to believe they were seeing details that weren't really there.

The first of the illusory Martian "canals" appeared on maps created by the Italian astronomer Geovanni Schiaparelli in 1877.  Schiaparelli called these features channels (Italian "canali") and believed they were natural features. Others, particularly Percival Lowell, saw the linear features as an indication of intelligent life on Mars. A whole world view developed in which Mars was a dying planet, where heroic Martian engineers struggled to convey water from the poles down to the deserts that covered most of the planet.  In subsequent maps the canals became much more numerous, much straighter.  Some were drawn as double canals, and many oases were drawn where the canals met.

Of course, not every astronomer viewing the planet saw the canals.  Nathanial Green did not show them in his excellent map of 1877. Tellingly, the eagle-eyed Edward Emerson Barnard, one of greatest observers of all time, did not see them. He wrote, "I have been watching and drawing the surface of Mars. It is wonderfully full of detail. There is certainly no question about there being mountains and large, greatly elevated plateaus. To save my soul, I can't believe in the canals as Schiaparelli draws them. I see details where he has drawn none....I verily believe, for all the verifications...that the canals as depicted by Schiaparelli are a fallacy and that they will be proved so before many oppositions are past."

But the belief in intelligent life on Mars became widespread. Perhaps its peak came around the end of the19th century.  In 1891, the Pierre Guzman prize of 100,000 French francs was established, to be awarded to the first person to communicate with a celestial body, and to receive a response. Mars was exempted from the award, as it was thought not to represent enough of a challenge!

But the planet still seems to have a pull on me. Schiaparelli's nomenclature for the surface features, though altered somewhat on modern maps, is beautiful and still used today. A scholar, his names were mostly from Homer, Herodotus, and the Bible. Greek myths abound. I once saw a small dark area on Mars called Nodus Alcyonius. I found that the name referred to the legend of Alcyone and Ceyx in Ovid.  That led me to kingfishers, and back to our Belted Kingfisher, Ceryle Alcyon. Since, I've never looked at a kingfisher dropping off a branch and flying along the water's surface, calling, in quite the same way.

Schiaparelli did make some amazing observations. He named one frequently occuring white spot on Mars, "Nix Olympica" (Latin, Snows of Olympus). He noted that even when most of the other features on the planet were hidden by dust storms, Nix Olympica could still be seen. As it turns out, he was viewing the wave clouds that form over the feature now known as Olympus Mons, the highest mountain in the solar system.

Morning Sky:

Venus continues to dazzle in the dawn sky this month, now rising about 3 hours before the Sun. As the month progresses its apparent size diminishes and it gets more gibbous. It is the brightest star-like object in the eastern sky before dawn so you won't have any problem picking it out.

Evening Sky: