Editing Giovanni Schiaparelli (section)

== Mars ==
{{main|Martian canals}}
[[Image:Karte Mars Schiaparelli MKL1888.png|thumb|300px|Schiaparelli's 1877 surface map of [[Mars]]]]

Among Schiaparelli's contributions are his telescopic observations of [[Mars]]. In his initial observations, he named the "[[Lunar mare|seas]]" and "continents" of Mars. During the planet's "great [[Opposition (astronomy)|opposition]]" of 1877, he observed a dense network of linear structures on the surface of Mars, which he called {{lang|it|canali}} in Italian, meaning "channels", but the term was mistranslated into English as "canals".<ref name=Smith01>Washam, Erik, [https://archive.today/20120912195828/http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Cosmic-Errors.html?c=y&page=2 "Cosmic Errors: Martians Build Canals!"], ''Smithsonian'' magazine, December 2010.</ref>

While the term "canals" indicates an artificial construction, the term "channels" [[connotation|connotes]] that the observed features were natural configurations of the planetary surface. From the incorrect translation into the term "canals", various assumptions were made about life on Mars; as these assumptions were popularized, the "canals" of Mars became famous, giving rise to waves of hypotheses, speculation, and [[folklore]] about the possibility of [[Martian]]s, intelligent life living on Mars. Among the most fervent supporters of the artificial-canal hypothesis was the American astronomer [[Percival Lowell]], who spent much of his life trying to prove the existence of intelligent life on the red planet.<ref name=Smith01/> After Lowell's death in 1916, astronomers developed a consensus against the canal hypothesis, but the popular concept of Martian canals excavated by intelligent Martians remained in the public mind for the first half of the 20th century and inspired a corpus of works of classic [[science fiction]].

Later, with notable thanks to the observations of the Italian astronomer [[Vincenzo Cerulli]], scientists came to the conclusion that the famous channels were actually mere [[optical illusions]]. The last popular speculations about canals were finally put to rest during the spaceflight era beginning in the 1960s, when visiting spacecraft such as [[Mariner&nbsp;4]] photographed the surface with much higher resolution than Earth-based telescopes, confirming that there are no structures resembling "canals".

In his book ''Life on Mars'', Schiaparelli wrote: "Rather than true channels in a form familiar to us, we must imagine depressions in the soil that are not very deep, extended in a straight direction for thousands of miles, over a width of 100, 200&nbsp;kilometres and maybe more. I have already pointed out that, in the absence of rain on Mars, these channels are probably the main mechanism by which the water (and with it organic life) can spread on the dry surface of the planet."