Terraformed Mars in the 19th Century

[Cray]

I may end up running a Sherlock Holmes-Space 1889 crossover for my gaming group and was wondering about the appearance of a habitable Mars to late 19th Century telescopes.

My specific questions involve city lights and thunderstorms.

Given that my alternate Mars is very Earthlike - big oceans, modest ice caps, Earth-like coloring - would it be feasible for 19th Century Earth telescopes to spot the city lights of Martians who, coincidentally, use 19th Century-type gas lights? Or would the cities be too dark?

Similar questions about lightning. I've seen some spectacular videos of lightning storms from the ISS, but would such lightning be visible on Mars with 19th Century telescopes?

I guess a persistent problem is that Earth observers would primarily see Mars' dayside and not much of its night, given that Mars is further from the Sun than Earth.

[Rynn]

I don't know enough about 19th century astronomy to answer whether or not they could see lit up cities however: in 1909 the Meudon 83-inch reflector in Paris was able to get a good enough view of Mars to disprove the Martian canal theory. I'd suggest looking into just how good the telescope was because it could give you a good estimate on whether or not cities would have been visible in the dayside as huge dark growths. I'm fairly certain the answer won't be good however, especially given your requirement that the Martians have Victorian era technology. If the telescope doesn't pan out how about tweaking history a bit further and have Martian radio transmissions intercepted as proof of civilisation?

[Cray]

If the telescope doesn't pan out how about tweaking history a bit further and have Martian radio transmissions intercepted as proof of civilisation?

That happens later in the timeline.

[stevebowers]

Tesla thought he'd picked up transmissions from Mars; they were probably from Jupiter, unless they were perytons from a local sparky morse code operator or something...

[JohnnyYesterday]

If Mars had significant oceans, it would be blue (where it wasn't white from cloud-cover), not iron-oxide red.

If Mars was home to any technological civilization at that level of development, the society would use large swaths of the land as farms--besides of course the natural vegetative cover. Now Martian plants wouldn't necessarily be green (they might be black, red, yellow, purple . . . depending on their version(s) of "chlorophyll"), but obviously not soil-colored.

If Mars was home to significant amounts of life, its soil wouldn't be rust-red. Organics would make it look like dirt on Earth.

Also, they should have been able to detect the high concentrations of oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere of this Mars using spectroscopy.

[Cray]

If Mars had significant oceans, it would be blue (where it wasn't white from cloud-cover), not iron-oxide red.

Yes. It might almost prompt renaming the planet, like Turtledove did in "World of Difference." (Mars was "Minerva" in that novel, because its seas 'flashed' like the eyes of Minerva.) But that prompts questions about how a non-red Mars would influence human history. At a minimum, the Greek and Roman religions invested a lot in the notion that Mars represented the bloody God of War. But then you end up with an alternate history branching off thousands of years ago rather than a fun steampunk romp.

So, I've kind of been plugging my ears on this point and making loud, "lalalalalala" sounds whenever I think about the impact of a non-red Mars on human history. "Everything turned out normal until Space 1889 happened, dammit!"

If Mars was home to any technological civilization at that level of development, the society would use large swaths of the land as farms--besides of course the natural vegetative cover.

I know agricultural fields are visible from low Earth orbit, but would Martian fields be recognizable as farmlands in the 19th Century from Earth?

Also, they should have been able to detect the high concentrations of oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere of this Mars using spectroscopy.

Eventually, yes. However, it wasn't until 1921 that Mars' surface temperatures were measured. In the 1870s, water was supposedly reported in the Martian atmosphere, but those readings proved false. Repeatable spectroscopic measurements don't seem to be made until the 1920s - 1930s, when the water measurements were debunked and oxygen levels were estimated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_...parameters

[Rynn]

Given that the setting is steam punk and, more importantly, the evidence that Mars was earth like should be more apparent you could postulate that spectroscopy and telescope technology is more advanced in this timeline. Chalk it up to a series of sponsorships to the Astronomical and Spectrographic Societies from aristocrats with extemely ambitious expansion plans.

[Cray]

Given that the setting is steam punk and, more importantly, the evidence that Mars was earth like should be more apparent you could postulate that spectroscopy and telescope technology is more advanced in this timeline. Chalk it up to a series of sponsorships to the Astronomical and Spectrographic Societies from aristocrats with extemely ambitious expansion plans.

I could do that (or utilize many other advanced technologies), but my original question was "what would historical 19th Century astronomy spot?"

Handwaving can come later when I know what I need to handwave and alter.

[Rynn]

Well I'm pretty sure the answer to your question is "not a lot". It wasn't until the 20th century that images of Mars good enough not to feature significant artefacts (like the canals) were possible. These two images are maps drawn of Mars by late 19th century astronomers and as you can see they only faithfully document very large features (at best). Given that the Martians are said to be comparable to Earth at the time we can assume their largest city is also comparable to Earth's; at the time this was London. If you watch this video at timepoint 4:54 it starts to show the Victorian era London. The outline of the city the use is for all of greater London, here's a borough map with scale bars. As you can see greater London is approximately 25 miles across, going back to the video by the late Victorian it looks like the diameter of the developed area is only 10 miles.

Taking all that together I think it's highly unlikely that 19th century telescopes would be able to spot Martian settlements. Even if they were lit up that is a very tiny spot to make out at a time when atmospheric optical illusions couldn't be corrected for.

[Dalex]

Lights of cities? No. Definitely not, the telescopes were not nearly powerful enough back then and Martian cities are supposed to be "victorian-like" so no city size of Oregon.

But there is something they might be able to see and it would be pretty informative. Forest fires, the big ones like those two years ago in Russia. All you need is random asteroid, volcanic eruption or just very dry season and you can have a nice light.