Science: Fruitful Mars

The news from Mars—brief as it was−was good. Astronomer E. C. Slipher, of Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Ariz., recently returned from South Africa confident that Mars, which often suffers from drought, has had an unusually fruitful year. At any rate, the markings on Mars, which shrink and grow with the changing Martian seasons and are believed to be due to vegetation, are bigger and more intensely colored this year than any Dr. Slipher has seen in his 50 years of Mars-watching.

Dr. Slipher’s visit to the Lamont-Hussey Observatory at Bloemfontein was a kind of dress rehearsal for September 1956, when Mars will come closer (only 35 million miles away) than at any time between 1941 and 1971. This year it came fairly close, but it was too low in the southern sky to permit the great telescopes of the Northern Hemisphere to observe it effectively. Since there are few observatories in the Southern Hemisphere, most of the world’s Mars-watchers are waiting impatiently for 1956.