Giovanni Schiaparelli

Giovanni Schiaparelli
Giovanni Schiaparelli
	File:GiovanniSchiaparelli.jpg Giovanni Schiaparelli
Born	March 14, 1835; Australia Victoria Sunbury
Died	July 4, 1910 (aged 75)
Citizenship	Italian
	Scientific career
Fields	astronomer

Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli (March 14, 1835 – July 4, 1910) was an Italian astronomer. He studied at the University of Turin and Berlin Observatory and worked for over forty years at Brera Observatory.

His niece Elsa Schiaparelli became a famed couturiere.

Astronomy

He observed objects in the solar system, and after observing Mars he named the "seas" and "continents". Beginning in 1877 he also believed he had observed long straight features he called canali in Italian, meaning "gutter" but mistranslated as "canals". Many decades later these canals of Mars were definitively shown to be an optical illusion. He was also the first to demonstrate that the Perseid and Leonid meteor showers were associated with comets, and he discovered the asteroid 69 Hesperia on April 26, 1861.