From: Alex Michael Bonnici (albonnici_at_vol.net.mt)
Date: Tue Jul 29 2003 - 19:15:04 PDT
Hello Gang,
Currently I am involved in a series of public education
activities that will be organised in late August in connection to the
upcoming Mars Opposition. I will be giving the first of a series of
public lectures concerning Mars. The first lecture is entitled “Lowell
and the Martian Canal Saga”. This has always been a favourite topic of
mine. When I was teaching High School Physics and Astronomy in the
United States I repeated astronomer Edward Walter Maunder’s experiment
“School Boy” experiment and got some interesting results that the
Martian canals were an optical illusion.
In my research I keep coming across references that claim that the
Martian Canals were photographed.
One case in point being the following quote from a pseudo scientific web
site:
http://www.goddardmultimedia.fsnet.co.uk/atpai/canals.htm
“Lowell made a special expedition to Chile in 1907 and obtained the
first photographic evidence of the canals. His successor Dr. E.C.
Slipher had better success in later years with observations from South
Africa, when camera equipment had improved considerably. The Martian
canals are seen on plates VI and XLVII in the book, The Photographic
Story of Mars, by E.C. Slipher. The edition I
obtained was published by Northland Press, Flagstaff, Arizona, in 1962.
“
Mention of the alleged 1907 photographs is also made in Chapter 8
(http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/online.bks/mars/chap08.htm) of The
Planet Mars:
A History of Observation and Discovery by William Sheehan the University
of Arizona Press, Tucson Copyright © 1996
Does anyone have copies of these Alleged photographs that they can send
me via e-mail or the URL of any online web page that has these
photographs? Also is it true that some people claim to have captured the
canals on CCD images? Please provide references.
I beforehand thank you for your help,
Yours truly,
Alex Michael Bonnici
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