History of Mars observation
The history of Mars observation is about the recorded history of observation of the planet Mars. Some of the early records of Mars’ observation date back to the era of the ancient Egyptian astronomers in the 2nd millennium BCE. The idea of life on Mars became popularized among the public when astronomers mistakenly thought they had detected the spectroscopic signature of water in the Martian atmosphere.
About History of Mars observation in brief
The history of Mars observation is about the recorded history of observation of the planet Mars. Some of the early records of Mars’ observation date back to the era of the ancient Egyptian astronomers in the 2nd millennium BCE. In the 16th century, Nicolaus Copernicus proposed a heliocentric model for the Solar System in which the planets follow circular orbits about the Sun. The first telescopic observation of Mars was by Galileo Galilei in 1610. In 1947, Gerard Kuiper showed that the thin Martian atmosphere contained extensive carbon dioxide; roughly double the quantity found in Earth’s atmosphere. Since the 1960s, multiple robotic spacecraft have been sent to explore Mars from orbit and the surface. The planet has remained under observation by ground and space-based instruments across a broad range of the electromagnetic spectrum. The discovery of meteorites on Earth that originated on Mars has allowed laboratory examination of the chemical conditions on the planet. The existence of Mars as a wandering object in the night sky was recorded by ancient Egypt astronomers. By the period of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, Babylonian astronomers were making systematic observations of the positions and behavior of the planets. For Mars, they knew, for example, that the planet made 37 synodic periods, or 42 circuits of the zodiac, every 79 years. The Greeks used the word planēton to refer to the seven celestial bodies that moved with the background of the stars and they held a little interest to the planets of the past. The Babylonians invented arithmetic methods for making minor corrections to the predicted positions of planets.
The last is the oldest known star map, being dated to 1534 BCE based on the position of the Planet of Mars. The period and motion of the Mars was known in detail during the Tang Dynasty, and the planet’s orbit was influenced by knowledge from the Mesopotamian culture of Nergal, their god of war and pestilence, and Ares, the god ofwar, and war, Ares. The idea of life on Mars became popularized among the public when astronomers mistakenly thought they had detected the spectroscopic signature of water in the Martian atmosphere, which was later proved to be an optical illusion. During the 1920s, the range of Martian surface temperature was measured; it ranged from −85 to 7 °C. The planetary atmosphere was found to be arid with only trace amounts of oxygen and water. The first standard nomenclature for Mars albedo features was adopted in 1960 by the International Astronomical Union. Occultations of Mars by Venus by astronomers by the Qin Dynasty were noted in 368, 375, 375 and 405 CE. The ancient Greek philosophers and Hellenistic astronomers developed a geocentric models to explain the planet’s motions. The Egyptians knew that Mars was portrayed on the ceiling of the tomb of Seti I, on the Ramesseum ceiling, and in the Senenmut star map. These observations were primarily made during the time intervals when the planet was located in opposition to the Sun, at which points Mars made its closest approaches to the Earth.
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This page is based on the article History of Mars observation published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 04, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
