Labels: text | screenshot OCR: Camille Flammarion (1842-1925) FIRST OBSERVATIONS At the age of 16, Camille Flammarion went to THE CANALS OF MARS work at the Paris Observatory directed by the great scholar OBSERVATIONS Urbain Le Verrier who had discovered Neptune in 1846. OF SPACE PROBES The astronomical fashion of the day was calculating the positions of the heavenly bodies-mathematical astronomy. Observation ... and imagination ... took second place. So, Flammarion eventually left his job at the Observatory and began actively popularizing science as a journalist. In 1887, he founded the French Astronomical Society. Flammarion was fascinated by Mars all his life. He published a large two-volume work on the planet and the possibility of colonizing it, "La Planete Mars et ses conditions d'habita- bilite" (1892, 1909). In a paper presented to the French Academy of Science in 1873, he outlined the planet's major characteristics as he saw them: * The two polar regions are alternately covered with snow, following the planet's seasons and due to its highly eccentric orbit. * Clouds and atmospheric currents exist on Mars, just like on Earth. Clouds are denser during the Martian winter than in summer. * The geography of Mars's surface is more equally divided than that of Earth between large land masses and oceans, with slightly more land than water. * The continents appear to be covered with reddish vegetation. MARS BETAT
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