Outcrops at the edge of an impact crater on the floor of the much-larger Trouvelot Crater on the planet Mars, named for French astronomer, amateur entomologist, and artist Étienne Léopold Trouvelot. Though he spent his latter years producing thousands of astronomical illustrations, M. Trouvelot is more (in)famous for his role in accidentally introducing the European gypsy moth to North America. In the late 1860s he imported gypsy moth eggs to his home in Medford, Massachusetts, intending to cross-breed silk-producing moths with the disease resistant pests. Some of the insects escaped from his backyard and began to spread and multiply. By now, the pests cause an estimated $868 million per year in damage to trees of North America.

M. Trouvelot’s misfortune in his entomological endeavours led him to pursue a new career in astronomical observation and illustration, beginning in the 1870s (image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona).

Mars, as observed by French astronomer, amateur entomologist, and artist Étienne Léopold Trouvelot on September 3rd, 1877. Though he spent his latter years producing thousands of astronomical illustrations, M. Trouvelot is more (in)famous for his role in accidentally introducing the European gypsy moth to North America. In the late 1860s he imported gypsy moth eggs to his home in Medford, Massachusetts, intending to cross-breed silk-producing moths with the disease resistant pests. Some of the insects escaped from his backyard and began to spread and multiply. By now, the pests cause an estimated $868 million per year in damage to trees of North America.

M. Trouvelot’s misfortune in his entomological endeavours led him to pursue a new career in astronomical illustration, after he observed several aurorae in 1870. He joined the staff at the Harvard College Observatory in 1872, and was invited to use the 26 inch refractor at the U.S. Naval Observatory for a year in 1875. A portfolio of his pastel astronomical observations was published in 1881 (image credit: The Trouvelot astronomical drawings: Atlas/NYPL Digital Gallery).

Today would have been American astronomer Percival Lowell’s 157th birthday. Lowell famously popularized the notion in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century that the planet Mars was crisscrossed by canals, believing them to be evidence of a desperate civilization’s efforts to re-engineer their environment on a planetary scale. Lowell spent fifteen years mapping the canals he imagined he saw on the Martian surface though observations from his Arizona-based observatory.

Lowell’s vivid descriptions of a Martian canal network and extrapolation of an alien civilization’s attempt to revivify its dead world captured the public imagination and inspired fictional tales of Mars like Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter stories, Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles, and Robert Heinlein’s Red Planet. Though most contemporary astronomers denied the existence of these canals, they weren’t completely disproven until NASA’s Mariner 9 probes flew over nearly the entire surface of Mars in 1971 and failed to image a single canal.

From above Mars (that brilliant red light in the sky overhead lately just east of the full Moon), NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter caught this pic of a half mile high twister making its way across the Amazonis Plantia region of the northern Martian desert. Dust devils like this, scribbling through the red oxide dust covering Mars, leave black lines all over its surface that astronomers at the dawn of the 20th Century took for canals irrigating a dying civilization (image credit: NASA/JPL—CalTech/University of Arizona).

Mars reaches opposition tonight in our sky at 20 hours universal time, when the Earth passes directly between the red planet and the Sun. Tips on where to find Mars in the sky here (image credit: NASA).

Colorful blocks of layered bedrock lie strewn across dunes near the center of 104 mile wide Becquerel Crater on Mars, as imaged Sunday by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The crater was named for Antoine Henri Becquerel, French physicist who discovered radioactivity along with Marie and Pierre Curie (image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona).

Martian Sunset: NASA’s Opportunity rover captured this image from the west-southwest edge of Endeavour Crater on the planet Mars on January 27th, as the setting sun lit the far rim and cast a tiny shadow of the rover on the crater floor. Space artist Don Davis reassembled the view from several images and worked for many hours to tease out the scene’s natural colors (credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/color mosaic ©Don Davis).

Mars wuvs u: NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft sent these images back of heart-shaped depressions (and one mesa) on the Martian surface during its orbital passes of the planet from 1999-2004 (image credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems).

Tiny Martian moon Phobos, caught transiting the face of Mars by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe on February 24, 2007. Phobos is near the center top of the image, casting a shadow on the planet near the top left corner, and near the U-shaped crater that will be the landing site of NASA’s Curiosity Rover (image credit: ESA/Reprocessed by Gordan Ugarkovic).

The Cerberus hemisphere of the planet Mars, as seen in a mosaic of 104 images from NASA’s Viking orbiter in February of 1980. Cerberus is the dark region left of center in this view of Mars, marked by fossae, or deep trenches. The volcanic plains to the south of Cerberus are Elysium Planitia.

On the western edge of Elysium Planitia, along the limb of the planet at around 8:00, is the dark U-shape marking Gale Crater, where NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory and Curiosity Rover will land next August to explore the geology of the 3 mile high mound at the center of the 96 mile diameter impact crater (image credit: NASA/USGS/Jody Swann/Tammy Becker/Alfred McEwen).

NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover left our planet on schedule this morning, atop an Atlas 5 rocket launched from Kennedy Space Center. The capsule containing the rover separated from the rocket and is confirmed to be on its way to Mars at about 229, 369 mph for a landing next August in Gale Crater (image credit: Stephen Clark/Spaceflight Now).

The HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter images the proposed landing site for NASA’s Curiosity rover in Gale Crater (image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona).

Martian 9/11 memorial: the Spirit and Opportunity rovers each carried aluminum recovered from the site of the World Trade Center attack to Mars, on the cable guard for the rock abrasion tool (emblazoned with the American flag) as a memorial to victims of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Spirit, seen here in this self-portrait, completed its main mission in 2004 but continued exploring the red planet until NASA lost communications with the rover in March of last year. Opportunity is still actively exploring Endeavour Crater (image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University).

Evidence of an ancient lake bed on Mars: dry channels and sediment in a delta pattern suggest that Eberswalde Crater may have held a lake of liquid water once in this image from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express Orbiter (image credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/G. Neukum)

Early summer at the Martian North Pole: in summer, carbon dioxide ice evaporates away at the poles and into the Martian atmosphere, leaving only water ice behind for in this image of Chasma Borealis from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express Orbiter (image credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/G. Neukum).