IN MANY WAYS, robotic exploration of Mars has relegated amateur astronomers to the status of telescopic tourists. NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has mapped nearly the entire surface of the Red Planet at a resolution of 6 metres or better. Five landers and six rovers have sifted Martian soil and sniffed Martian air. In the span of a single generation during the closing years of the 20th century, “the very character of the scientific questions changed as the planets went from being astronomical objects to geological objects,” notes William K. Hartmann of the University of Arizona's Planetary Science Institute.
Yet a few mysteries from the era of earthbound planetary exploration still linger. Prominent among them are Martian ‘flares’ — gleaming points of light that suddenly appear and persist for a few seconds to several minutes before fading from view.
Anomalous observations
The earliest report of these rare phenomena dates from 1896, when the British amateur John Milton Offord described a “brilliant scintillating star-like point” appearing briefly in Hellas, the vast ochre tract in the planet's southern hemisphere, which we now know as an ancient impact basin. During the following century, however, most flare sightings would be reported by Japanese observers, who came to regard spotting them as something of a specialty.
While observing Mars on the evening of June 4, 1937, Sizuo Mayeda saw an intense, flickering point of light near the morning limb at 55° north latitude. Far brighter than the polar cap, it
