non-atmospheric

Updated: May 9, 2025

But the extensive Martian atmosphere, implicitly believed in on the strength of some erroneous observations by Cassini and Römer in the seventeenth century, vanished before the sharp occultation of a small star in Leo, witnessed by Sir James South in 1822; and Dawes's observation in 1865, that the ruddy tinge is deepest near the central parts of the disc, certified its non-atmospheric origin.

Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke - A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century: Fourth Edition