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Tycho Brahe made good calculations of the position of Mars 200 years before the telescope was created.
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Galileo Galilei observes Mars with a telescope.
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Dutch astronomer named Christiaan Huygens draws Mars using a telescope that he made. He records a large, dark spot on Mars, and calculates that Mars has a 24 hour period.
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Giovanni Cassini observes Mars and concludes that the rotational period of one Mars day is 24 hours and 40 minutes.
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Huygens is the first person to notice a white spot at the south pole, probably the southern polar cap.
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Giancomo Miraldi observes "white spots" at the poles, and discovers that the southern cap is not centered on the rotational pole.
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A British Astronomer Royal named William Herschel, studied Mars with telescopes that he built himself.
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A French astronomer named Honore Flaugergues notices "yellow clouds" on the surface of Mars, which were later found to be dust clouds.
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Wilhelm Beer and Johann von Maedler observe Mars over periods of 759, 1604, and 2234 days. They determine that the rotational period of Mars is 24 hours, 37 minutes, 22.6 seconds.
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William Whewell concludes that Mars has green seas and red land, and wonders if there is extraterrestrial life.
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Richard Anthony Proctor publishes a map of Mars with continents and oceans.
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Pierre Jules Janssen & Sir William Huggins make the first attempt to detect water vapor and oxygen spectroscopically. which was unsuccessful.
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Asaph Hall discovers the moons of Mars. He names them Phobos, which means fear, and Deimos, which means fright, after the horses of the Greek war god, Ares (counterpart to the Roman war god, Mars).
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In 1877, Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli announces that he has seen "canali" on Mars.
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In 1879, Schiaparelli observes double "canali", to him an example of "germination".
