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the more interesting of the lot, as he was not just an astronomer with his own observatory (as Lowell would become) but also an avid spiritualist who believed, among other things, that Martians were trying to communicate with Earth. He was an avid student of the occult sciences, as he called them, and had spent time as a young man studying in a Paris seminary. Flammarion apparently believed in reincarnation and was very spiritual. Yet, when it came to Mars, he at least made the attempt to remain somewhat objective, considering the era.
    In 1873, he wrote:
    In Mars there is neither an Atlantic nor a Pacific, and the journey round it might be made dryshod. Its seas are [M]editerraneans, with gulfs of various shapes, extending hither and thither in great numbers into the terra firma, after the manner of our Red Sea. The second character, which also would make Mars recognizable at a distance, is that the seas lie in the southern hemisphere mostly, occupying but little space in the northern, and that these northern and southern seas are joined together by a thread of water. On the entire surface of Mars there are three such threads of water extending from the south to the north, but, as they are so wide apart, it is but rarely that more than one of them can be seen at a time. The seas and the straits which connect them constitute a very distinctive character of Mars, and they are generally perceived whenever the telescope is directed upon that planet. 4
    Then, in the same treatise, Flammarion teased his readers with rationality, only to dash it again:
    We speak of plants on Mars, of the snows at its poles, of its seas, atmosphere, and clouds, as though we had seen them. Are we justified in tracing all these analogies? In fact, we see only blotches of red, green, and white, upon the little disk of the planet; but, is the red, terra firma; the green, water; or the white, snow? Yes, we are now justified in saying that they are. For two centuries astronomers were in error with regard to spots on the moon, which were taken for seas, whereas they are motionless deserts, desolate regions where no breeze ever stirs. But it is otherwise as regards the spots on Mars.
    Perhaps not surprisingly, he also wrote some early works that could be classified as science fiction (alien encounters, no less). It should be mentioned that in his spiritual writing he at least made an attempt to bring the scientific method to his efforts.
    Asaph Hall (1829-1907) was a self-taught astronomer who nonetheless managed to wrangle a position at Harvard (he attended two colleges but never graduated from either). Despite his academic shortcomings, he managed to become at various times a professor of mathematics and the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. During his career, he authored over five hundred scientific papers about his astronomical observations, primarily about double stars and the planets. Working at the US Naval Observatory, Hall created maps of Mars and was the first to note its two moons, in 1877. The names Phobos and Deimos were suggested by a scholar at Eton, in Britain, as a fitting nod to Homer's Iliad.
    Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835–1910) was far less eccentric than Flammarion and a more prolific mapmaker than Hall. He spent time observing on telescopes in locations as varied as Berlin and Russia, eventually returning to Italy. Besides his mapping of Mars, he is known for his discovery of the relationship between yearly meteor showers on Earth and the comets from which they originate. In the same year that Hall discovered the twin moons of Mars, Schiaparelli made some of his first detailed maps using his nine-inch refracting telescope in Brera, Italy. The lines he observed (or thought he did), and the derived markings on his maps, he termed “canali,” or in Italian, channels. He later claimed that he did not intend this to suggest intelligent engineering: “[T]hese names may be regarded as a mere artifice….