Live data from Hacker News

What does the night sky look like on Mars?

skyatnightmagazine.com

11–20 of 84 posts

Re: What does the night sky look like on Mars?

#13
post #10

I remember Starry Night having the option to see the night sky from different planets. You know, in case you wanted to track the stars with a telescope, on Mars.

I can't say enough good things about Starry Night in terms of teaching me about Astronomy and the Universe early on. Being able to "go" to other star systems and see what the night sky looks like was essential for intuiting our "place" in the sky in a lot of ways, much like playing Kerbal solidified my intuition around basic orbital mechanics.

Re: What does the night sky look like on Mars?

#14

> You would see two moons in that sky instead of one Any pictures of this?

There are some videos (from pictures) of eclipses, which show both: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_Kn3M2ierk

This one more zoomed out, but only with Phobos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViiriVhIhjE

Taking into account that the Sun itself is seen smaller than on Earth, we can already imagine the view. The main problem would be that "Phobos is one of the least reflective bodies in the Solar System, with an albedo of just 0.071.".

Re: What does the night sky look like on Mars?

#16
post #14

> You would see two moons in that sky instead of one Any pictures of this?

There are some videos (from pictures) of eclipses, which show both: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_Kn3M2ierk This one more zoomed out, but only with Phobos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViiriVhIhjE Taking into account that the Sun itself is seen smaller than on Earth, we can already imagine the view. The main problem would be that "Phobos is one of the least reflective bodies in the Solar System, with an albedo…

This makes me appreciate our moon.

How lucky we are to have a moon that is roughly the same size in the sky as the sun is -- aligned such that we occasionally get to see a perfect solar eclipse and the sun's corona with our naked eyes.

Re: What does the night sky look like on Mars?

#17
post #2

> Night-time temperatures can drop to -900C wait, what?

That would be something... especially given that absolute zero, the lowest temperature possible when matter ceases movement is -273C.

It’s a funny typo. Always makes you wonder how much other stuff they get wrong that’s missed.

Re: What does the night sky look like on Mars?

#18
post #4
post #2

> Night-time temperatures can drop to -900C wait, what?

You'd expect better from Sky At Night. (Wikipedia says -143 °C, -225 °F)

The attack on spacex at the start - the one company that’s actually likely to put sky at night readers on Mars - took me out of it before the 900C hilarity.

Re: What does the night sky look like on Mars?

#19
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some videos (from pictures) of eclipses, which show both: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_Kn3M2ierk This one more zoomed out, but only with Phobos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViiriVhIhjE Taking into account that the Sun itself is seen smaller than on Earth, we can already imagine the view. The main problem would be that "Phobos is one of the least reflective bodies in the Solar System, with an albedo…

This makes me appreciate our moon. How lucky we are to have a moon that is roughly the same size in the sky as the sun is -- aligned such that we occasionally get to see a perfect solar eclipse and the sun's corona with our naked eyes.

Also, it's more spherical than the moons of Mars.

Re: What does the night sky look like on Mars?

#20
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some videos (from pictures) of eclipses, which show both: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_Kn3M2ierk This one more zoomed out, but only with Phobos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViiriVhIhjE Taking into account that the Sun itself is seen smaller than on Earth, we can already imagine the view. The main problem would be that "Phobos is one of the least reflective bodies in the Solar System, with an albedo…

This makes me appreciate our moon. How lucky we are to have a moon that is roughly the same size in the sky as the sun is -- aligned such that we occasionally get to see a perfect solar eclipse and the sun's corona with our naked eyes.

> aligned such that we occasionally get to see a perfect solar eclipse and the sun's corona with our naked eyes.

Uh...don't do that. It'll end up being the last thing you see.

Post reply on HN