Nathaniel Green's 13 inch reflector telescope, on Madeira. Nathaniel Everett Green (1823-1899) was an amateur British astronomer, and in 1877 he used this telescope to study the surface of Mars. His observations led him to refute the suggestion, made by Schiaparelli and later Percival Lowell, that the surface of Mars was covered with canals. Green was a founder member of the British Astronomical Association in 1890, and was its president from 1896-1898.