Mars was a mystery to many people in ancient times, and many more people thought that it was a pagan, or non-Christian, planet, so some astronomers were apt to ignore it from their studies, but others continued to gaze upon it. Early astronomers explored Mars with their primitive telescopes, and mapped the larger features of the planet. The earliest known extensive astronomer of Mars was Schiaparelli, who was the first person to see the supposed canalls that were said to exist on Mars. Born in the 1800's, he was the first serious astronomer to study Mars. He once thought that he saw a few canals running along the Martian surface, he believed that these canals were rivers that ran from the moister northern continent to the drier southern continent.

Lowell, the next noted astronomer in the human history of Mars, believed that they were canals, or as he called them, canalli, which means almost the same thing as canals. He believed that the canalli were built there by an advanced Martian civilization. This supported the currently extra-terrestrial crazed populace. The astronomical community, however, shunned him, for as hard as they looked, they could still see no canalli. Lowell mapped hundreds of these canals and published them along with a book about the supposed Martian civilization. Unfortunately for Lowell, he did not know of the tendency of the human eye to create black lines over a bright surface. Any remaining thought about the canals truly existing was banished when the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) sent back the first clear pictures of the Martian surface back to Earth.

Most of the observing of Mars was done by astronomers who were members a society of astronomers dedicated to the observing and finding of unknown bodies with in our solar system. They used plates to observe the planets nightly positions more accurately. Plates where circular disks that made bright things appear as dark spots on a white background. These plates where used to discover Mars's two moons, Phobos and Deminos.

Mars as seen through a powerful telescope

The Naming of Mars and Its Moons:

Mars is reddish in color, which in ancient mythologies meant death, pain, and suffering, a.k.a war, so was named for the Roman god of war, who originated from the Greek's version of the God of War, Ares. Later two moons were found orbiting the planet. Named Phobos and Deminos, after Mars' two attendants, they appear to be asteroids that were caught in the planet's gravitational pull. Phobos is slowly falling toward the planet's surface, while Deminos is floating away