Encyclopedia
Discovery
- Famous astronomers
- Main dates
- Discoveries in
  the solar system
  - Sun
    - Sunspot
    - Solar eclipses
  - Mercury
    - Advance of the perihelion
  - Venus
    - Phases
    - Rotations
  - Earth
    - Form
    - Motion
  - Moon
    - Craters
    - Surface
  - Mars
  - Jupiter
  - Saturn
    - Rings
    - Satellites
  - Uranus
  - Neptune
  - Pluto
  - Asteroids
  - Comets
Space
- History
- Launching sites
- Space missions
  - Apollo
  - Mariner
  - Viking
  - Voyager
  - Galileo
  - Soho
  - Mars Express
  - Cassini/Huygens
  - Luna
Observatories
- FP7 ESPaCE Institutes
  - IMCCE
  - ROB
  - TUB
  - JIVE
  - CNES
  - DLR
  - TUD
- Other European observatories
  - Observatoire de Paris
  - Pic du Midi
  - OHP
  - Bordeaux
  - OCA
  - Besançon
  - Greenwich
  - Torino
  - Vatican
  - Catania
  - Bucarest
  - Pulkovo
  - SAI
- Institutes outside Europe
  - USNO
  - JPL
  - Mount Palomar
  - Zelenchuk
  - Shanghai
  - Itajuba
  - ESO
- The largest
  telescopes
  - Reflectors
  - Refractors
- Space observatories
  - HST
  - GAIA
  - SOHO
Understanding

Mars Encyclopedia

Dates of discoveries

Decrease font size

Increase font size

Print this page

Français

Discoveries > Mars I

MARS

Surface of Mars: Cassini drawings (1666)

The first drawings of Cassini in 1666 already show the polar cap of Mars.

The observation of the surface of Mars is only possible when Mars is at the closest to Earth: unfortunately it is not the case every opposition because of the eccentricity of the orbits.