The Flower and the Bee

In 1894, Mars came to a favorable opposition, a little farther from the Earth than it had been in 1892, but much higher above the horizon for observers in the Northern Hemisphere where most of the major observatories were located. For months increasing in brightness as it drew steadily closer to the Earth, at the time of its mid-October opposition, when it approached within 40-million miles (64-million kilometers), it loomed as “a great red star that rises at sunset through the haze about the eastern horizon, and then, mounting higher with the deepening night, [blazed] forth against the dark background of space with a splendour that … rivals the giant Jupiter himself. Startling for its size, the stranger looks the more fateful for being a fiery red. Small wonder that by many folk it is taken for a portent” [1].