Mars has featured in mankind’s fantasies and mythology for thousands of years. The planet itself is named after the Roman god of war. Jonathan Swift wrote in “Gulliver’s Travels” in 1726 that astronomers on the mythical floating land of Laputa had discovered two swiftly moving moons on Mars, and provided information on their distances from Mars and their periods of revolution about Mars.
Astonishingly, the moons of Mars had not been discovered yet, and would not be for another hundred and fifty years or so, though Kepler had surmised before Swift’s time that Mars had two moons. Swift’s information on the distances from the planet and the revolution periods of Mars two moons was extremely accurate, however, many scientists pass it off as a good guess.
This was only the beginning of the mystery of the moons of Mars, and of Mars itself. Prior to 1877, when the moons were seen for the first time, no one had seen any moons near the planet even though excellent telescopes at the disposal of astronomers were easily capable of discerning them.
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