Mars Travel Guide

摘要

Peering through a telescope on the roof of Milan's Brera palace in 1877, Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli sketched the first detailed map of Mars. He dutifully named its "seas" and "continents" but then insisted that what looked to him like lines on the surface must be artificial canali or "channels" (translated into English as "canals"). It was a mistake that astronomers would try for decades to validate in hopes of finding intelligent life on Mars.