Terraformed Mars in the 19th Century

[radtech497]

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.

Huggins and Janssen both measured Martian spectra in 1867; both reported detecting water (a claim corroborated by Vogel in 1872 and by Maunder in 1875, though it was questioned and disproven later). Thus, Martian spectroscopy falls firmly into the Victorian Era (20 June 1837 to 22 January 1901) and, perhaps more to the point, within the era portrayed by the steampunk genre.

Radtech497