Why Mars?

摘要

In august 2003, when Mars and Earth drew closer together than they had been for 6,000 years, I was deep into the research for a literary history of Mars. Earth and Mars routinely align in what astronomers call an opposition, with Earth in the middle and Mars and the sun on opposite sides. It occurs every two years, but only rarely when Mars is at its nearest point to the sun. Having had the thrill of examining Percival Lowell's historic Clark Refractor at the observatory he founded in Flagstaff, Arizona, I wanted to celebrate the 2003 opposition by looking at Mars through the closest cousin available to me in the Boston area.