Posted on 07/31/2018 2:41:41 PM PDT by ETL
Who discovered Mars? That's a trick question: Because the planet is visible to the naked eye, humans have been watching our rusty neighbor for thousands of years, and there's no way to track down the name of the long-dead observer who first noticed its reddish glow.
But just because we'll never be able to give that sharp-eyed human a name doesn't mean there's nothing interesting to learn about the history of observing Mars.
That said, they didn't know what Mars was — it was just a bright light that didn't behave in quite the same way as the other bright lights did. "These [planets] of course never were regarded, as they are now, as their own separate worlds," Anthony Aveni, who studies ancient astronomy in Central and South America and who retired last year as a professor at Colgate University, told Space.com.
Early observers of Mars also prioritized different types of observations of the planet than we do today. Modern astronomers focus on the sidereal year, the time it takes Mars to orbit the sun — about 687 days. But for centuries, Aveni said, that wasn't the number sky-minded people associated with Mars. "They recognize periodicities and movements that we don't pay any attention to," he said.
For Mars, that meant people prioritized 780 days, the average length of the cycle that Mars shows in the sky. The planet appears and disappears in the night sky, sometimes slipping into the sunlit sky and becoming invisible. If you watched from appearance to appearance, or from disappearance to disappearance, a cycle would last about 780 days, the synodic period of the planet. "It's about how Mars relates to you personally, how it relates to our culture," Aveni said. "It's not about how long it rotates, whether it has life."
Aveni primarily studies the Maya, and he said that most of what we know about how they watched Mars comes from just one book, called the Dresden Codex. The text includes a table of observations that scholars know must be of Mars because of the 780-day cycle.
The book also includes a drawing of what scholars refer to as the "Mars Beast," which Aveni described as a macaw-like creature with a nose like an elephant's trunk. He added that the planet's orbit, which carries Mars across the whole sky, shaped the traits associated with it. "He's more of a watchdog or a guardian of the entire landscape," Aveni said.
Other cultures looking to the sky, Aveni said, were more interested in how the different planets interacted than in any individual planet's journeys. For example, he points to Chinese astronomers, who were fascinated by planetary conjunctions.
One Aboriginal Australian communitysaw Mars as one of four wives following the moon; another saw Mars and Venus as the two eyes of a celestial being. Although few traditions about Mars survive, astronomers focusing on Australia have evidence that Aboriginal peoples across the region tracked it and the other planets carefully for millennia.
And, of course, the Greeks and Romans traced the movements of Mars and other celestial bodies across the sky. They associated the Red Planet with their god of war (Mars to the Romans; Ares to the Greeks), giving us the Mars we know today.
When I used to go out with my tripod-mounted 16x70 binocs, I would, when it was possible, view Venus in the daytime. It's actually naked eye visible in the daytime at times, if you know precisely where to look, and of course have good enough vision. In fact, Venus' crescent phases can only be seen during the daytime. Otherwise, the planet is ordinarily too glaringly bright.
I can't recall if I've ever tried it, but it well may be possible to see Venus as a crescent at night under hazy sky conditions, where the clouds act as a filter of sorts.
Quick story: One day I had the binocs set up in New York's Central Park, providing the public free views of Venus as a crescent, and a guy walks up to me with a bewildered look on his face wondering what the heck I was looking in the bright blue clear 'empty' sky. I answered, the planet Venus, and invited him to take a look. He was amazed at the sight. Although I never let on that I knew who the guy was, he was comedian Jerry Seinfeld. Anyway, he hung around for about an hour talking as I showed other passerbys the view.
About a week or so later I read that he had been going around the city that week looking for material for some upcoming routine or project that he was working on. He basically was out looking for 'oddball' characters for ideas and inspiration. I don't know if he ever used anything from that day in any of his routines.
"Did I ever tell you the story of how I came
up with the recipe for the Mars Candy Bar?"
Dang! Always wondered about that...He must be older than he looks...
Thanks ETL. There's also been some controversy over who really discovered Mars' moons, as a couple of hypothetical moons appear in a novel antedating their official discovery. Turns out that the size and orbital characteristics don't match. Still odd though.
I had to search on it. The only things I found were a joke about “If aliens are looking at us from a telescope, I bet they thing the DOGS are the master - we pick up their poop, feed them,....”
And - in the Seinfeld writing room he had images from the Hubble up on the wall - to keep him humble, and that what he said or did - it really didn’t matter that much!
Ya never know - maybe you were the inspiration for either or both of those! (Don’t check the years, and just assume that you were!!)
I didn’t know that about seeing the phases of Venus. I know that the one and only time I looked through a telescope up at the local school when my kids were little, and saw the rings of Saturn with my very own eyes - WOW! Not very large mind you - but there they were!
Thank YOU for pinging the mob.
Here’s one I think you will find interesting, if you haven’t already seen or heard about it.
Yellowstone super-volcano has a different history than previously thought
https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3675705/posts
As far as they knew at that distant time in the past, those "wanderers" could very well have been the same sort of objects as the stars, only they, for one reason or another, moved with respect to other things in the sky. But it was keen on their part to have noticed it. Then again, they didn't have cable and internet back then, and so didn't have much else to do with their nights but to look up in amazement at the starry sky.
Thanks for going through the trouble of looking. Don't know why I never thought of it.
Clarification to what I wrote earlier: Although Venus can, at times, be naked eye visible in the daytime, and, Venus' crescent phases are only, or most easily, seen during the daytime (when she is at the proper angular distance from the Sun), her crescent phases can only be seen with large binocs or a telescope.
Just did a quick search for “Jerry Seinfeld” + “Central Park” and found this...
February 7, 2012
The Time Jerry Seinfeld Screamed at a Naked, Masturbating Man in Central Park
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2012/02/jerry-seinfeld-central-park.html
No, it wasn’t me! My only encounter with him was in 2002, and I wasnt naked, or doing anything but looking at Venus through a pair of binocs! Lol!
I bet he made THAT incident into a bit!
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