Perhaps, there are not so many illusions and delusions connected with any planet of the solar system as with Mars. And for the first time he presented an "unhealthy sensation" back in 1784. It was then that the British astronomer William Herschel, who observed the planet through a telescope, noted the presence on it of vast dark and light areas, which he considered the surfaces, respectively, of the seas and continents.
Herschel, apparently, was the first to suggest that Mars is inhabited by living beings, living almost in the same conditions as we are on Earth. The opinion of a reputable scientist has become almost universally accepted for almost a century, and some astronomers even wrote about the observation of seasonal changes, which were associated with the annual cycle of changes in vegetation. Fortunately for Herschel, his merits to science are so great that today few people remember this completely innocent error of the great scientist.
In 1877, during the next great confrontation, Mars approached the Earth to a minimum distance while moving in orbit, which, of course, attracted great attention of specialists. The Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli who observed the planet then first recorded and described a network of "channels" that supposedly covers its surface. The whole of Europe was engulfed by Martian fever - and it is not surprising, because the channels can only be the result of a sufficiently developed civilization!
Schiaparelli called the discovered lines the Italian word "canali", which means ducts of natural or artificial origin, and can be translated into English as "channels", "canals" or "grooves". When translating his works, the word "canals" was used, which is used for artificial channels. Such a translation led to a series of reports that Schiaparelli allegedly announced the discovery of artificial structures on Mars.
Further, the American astronomer Percival Lowell joined in the case of Martian channels. He not only supported Schiaparelli's point of view, but also calculated that the width of the middle channel along with the belt of vegetation surrounding them could reach 100 km. He believed that the climate on the planet is very arid, and the Martians use them to irrigate the earth with water from melting polar caps.
Summing up his observations, in 1908 Lowell published the book Mars as the Abode of Life, where he cited many reasons for the existence of a developed civilization on the Red Planet.
All this hype has led to the fact that astronomers who did not believe in Martian civilization seriously took up the study of Mars and the system of its channels. So the English scientist Alfred Russell Wallace got so angry that in his book "Is there life on Mars?" called Lowell a scammer.
And they finished off the theory of Martian channels ... British schoolchildren. In 1903, astronomer E. Munder conducted such an experiment with them. He showed students a series of drawings of Mars from afar, on which rows of dots were placed instead of channels, and asked them to draw what they see. Many depicted instead of dots just lines. From this, Munder concluded that the Martian channels could be just a game of imagination.
As was later confirmed by a series of observations using more powerful telescopes. And the result of this story was summed up by the American astronomer W. Corlis, who once said: "In order to see Martian channels, you must have a good telescope, good vision and ... good imagination."
Another sensation erupted in 1976, when NASA unveiled a picture of one of the Martian mountains taken by the Viking 1 probe. From the very beginning, the picture of the "Martian Sphinx" was accompanied by an explanation that the image visible on the photo is just an illusion and where it comes from.