Abstract
MARS IF the two great leaders of the planetary system have filled us with astonishment at their magnitude and velocity, and with perplexity in the contemplation of arrangements so incomprehensibly unlike our own, they have not exhausted all the resources of the season. There yet remains a much nearer and more intelligible neighbour, who possesses a peculiar interest for an opposite reason—his similarity to ourselves. This especial character of the ruddy planet has long been known, to astronomers, and will naturally make him an object of careful study before we leave him too far behind; and though the opposition of this year does not diminish his distance so much as abot of 1877 favourable ones; for English astronomers, at least, it is far, more propitious than the last, from his greatly-increased elevation. Much had been expected at that last opposition from the broad expansion of his disk, but the indistinctness of detail was a general source of disappointment here, though the success of Schiaparelli at Milan and Green at Madeira showed that the fault lay chiefly—perhaps not exclusively—in the English sky. My own impression certainly then was that, besides the want of clear outline inseparable from so low an altitude, there was a deficiency in decidedness of form and strength of tone as compared with previous observations, the cause oi which may have lain in the atmosphere of the planet, affected possibly by especial proximity to the sun in an orbit of considerable excentricity. At any rate, we may reasonably hope to find the present season more favourable for exploration than the last; for though at nearest approach we have only had 23″ of disk instead of 29″.4 1877, success depends, with equal instrumental sharpness, much more upon altitude and steadiness of air than on increase of visible surface. Schiaparelli was enablec to obtain his most valuable results after opposition, when he diameter had decreased to 20″ or even 16″, and he asserts that he was able to continue his researches with advantage even till it came down to less than 6″.
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WEBB, T. The Planets of the Season . Nature 21, 212–213 (1880). https://doi.org/10.1038/021212a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/021212a0