Mars, the`red planet', shines with almost a blood red colour in the night sky and has always been strongly associated with war and bloodshed. The first indication of such a link stretches back as far as 3000 BC with the Sumerian civilisation of the Middle East. It was only natural that the Sumerian's successors, the Chaldeans, adopted Mars as their god of war, christening it Nergal. This trend continued with the Greeks, who named the planet Ares, and then with the Romans, who called it Mars. Even today, the symbol for the planet remains a shield and spear.

The first telescopic observation of Mars was probably undertaken by Galileo Galilei around 1608 to 1610, but it was not until 1636 that the first records were taken, this time by Francisco Fontana. Unfortunately, his sketches seem to show more the problems of his telescope than the structure of the planet, with a central black spot and a dark outer ring. Telescope design gradually improved throughout the 17th century, and by 1659, Christian Huygens had made probably the first informative sketch of Mars. His observations (taken over a number of weeks) show a triangular feature which is still recognisable today, known as Syrtis Major. Huygens' results were so reliable that he even used the reappearance of this feature to measure the rotational period of Mars as 24 hours, less than 1 hour away from the value recognised today. Huygens was also able to crudely sketch the presence of a polar ice cap to the south of the planet, although he did not at the time identify it as such.

In 1666 Giovanni Cassini made some more precise measurements of Mars. He calculated the rotational period to be just under 24 hours 40 minutes, almost 37.5 minutes longer than Earth's and very close to the presently accepted value. He is also heralded as the man who discovered and identified the polar ice caps on Mars, which were not described any more fully until 1719 by Giacomo Miraldi. The Martian polar caps in fact bear striking similarities to the Arctic and Antarctic caps on Earth, but almost a century passed before the German born English astronomer William Herschel suggested the caps may be made of ice or snow.

There is some confusion as to the exact date of the first map of Mars. Some claim there can be no exact date, stating just the 1830's, while others give the date as 1840. There is no argument however in the naming of the two men who completed the map: Wilhelm Beer and Johann von Madler, two German astronomers. The map was very poor, and almost no features seen can be linked to anything observed today. However, one important contribution was made, and is still used today: Beer and Madler first established a longitude and latitude system similar to Earth's.

In 1864, the Reverend William Dawes published a much-improved map of the Martian surface, and just three years later in 1867, a fellow Englishman, Richard Proctor first attempted the naming of the bright and dark markings observed. For reasons not known however, Proctor named no less than six areas after Dawes: Dawes Ocean, Dawes Continent, Dawes Sea, Dawes Strait, Dawes Island, and Dawes Bay. It comes as no surprise that Reverend Dawes was not as universally accepted as Proctor had first hoped, and this, combined with the fact that he had used the unreliable base map of Beer and Madler, resulted in the near complete disregard of his work.

During 1887 - 1891, Mars was at opposition, when it is best to observe the planet. Taking full advantage of this, an Italian astronomer, Giovanni Schiaparelli, prepared a set of very detailed maps of Mars. His observations and subsequent naming, were based on the assumption that the lighter areas were land, and the darker more dull areas were seas and oceans. When naming the features he had seen, Schiaparelli wisely avoided calling them after real people and turned to a more classical combination of biblical and geographical names. For example, Atlantis is seen, as are Libya and Ausonia (Italy). This system was universally accepted, and it is still widely used today, with just two pit falls. The first pit-fall is that the vast majority of modern day astronomers no longer have any formal training in Latin or Greek, and consequently find these names a little difficult to grasp. The second pit-fall is that many of Schiaparelli's features are difficult to see on present day photographic images. To rectify this, a committee of the International Astronomical Union decided to identify 128 areas of special importance, and in 1958 produced a map, synthesising many previous maps and observations.

During the early 20th century, an amateur astronomer, John Mellish, proclaimed that his friend and acclaimed astronomer E.E.Barnard had recorded Martian craters between 1892-1893, and that he himself had also observed them in November 1915. The actual drawings which Barnard made had at the time gone missing, so evidence was a little flimsy, and despite Mellish's glamorous descriptions:

`...mountain ranges and peaks and craters and other things both dark and light..'

fellow astronomers were a little sceptical having never themselves observed such features. Barnard's drawings were actually found in the summer of 1987 and are surprisingly disappointing, showing few features. As for Mellish, the evidence of his claims are purely circumstantial, but he did record some true craters, and there is no reason to doubt his observations as the rest of his claims about Barnard's drawings are accurate. If this is the case, then he alone can be credited with the discovery and observation of the first Martian craters.

The final part of the story of early observations of Mars (prior to spacecraft exploration of the 20th century) came in 1877 when the American astronomer Asaph Hall observed two tiny moons orbiting Mars. He named the moons Phobos (fear) and Deimos (panic) after the two horses that pulled the chariot of Mars, the Greek God of War.

Phobos