Abstract
STATISTICS are looked upon, as a rule, as hateful things, but nevertheless it would be interesting to know how many people out of the millions who walk this globe will turn at this period a telescope, however small It may be, in the direction of the planet Mars, which is shining so brilliantly in our eastern heavens. Times there were, no doubt, as for instance in the early Babylonian and Egyptian civilisation, when Mars was more generally the subject of scrutiny than to-day, but then the appearance of this intermittent and gradually brightening object made far different impressions on the minds of those early observers. Early it was that the peculiar coloured rays cast by his shining surface on this earth were first remarked. He was known to the Greeks and Hebrews as the fiery planet, and in Sanskrit he was referred to as like “burning coal.”
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
L., W. Mars as he Now Appears. Nature 50, 476–478 (1894). https://doi.org/10.1038/050476b0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/050476b0