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What does the night sky look like on Mars?

skyatnightmagazine.com

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

#41

Post by morlockabove »

perl4ever wrote: post #38
onethought wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The star link complaint seems kind of like how people must have been when telegram/power lines went up.

Astronomers, amateur or otherwise, have been complaining about "light pollution" forever. Traditionally, it's about night-time lighting on Earth that isn't shielded from transmitting light upwards. It startled me to find (in a long ago HN thread) that people, presumably nerdy types, are not generally sympathetic to the complaints. I somehow assumed that universal lukewarm quasi-environmental feelings would mean peopl…

The kinds of people who like building things will be less sympathetic to environmental concerns when those concerns are 'don't build that, leave the world untainted by human hand'- there's a difference between polluting by building/placing something of value somewhere and polluting as a pure stupid ugly externality. Engineer-y people might be inclined to hate the latter but not the former.

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

#42

Post by grecy »

Teknoman117 wrote: post #6

Ah, yes, amateur astronomy on Mars. Something we'll not be able to do in my lifetime sadly.

> Ah, yes, amateur astronomy on Mars. Something we'll not be able to do in my lifetime sadly

While that is true, think of all the things that are possible in your lifetime, that weren't to the people that came before you.

Instant video chat with people on the other side of the globe, the world's information in your pocket, personal transportation that doesn't eat hay, you're not dying from Polio, etc. etc. The list is enormous.

And, for what it's worth, one day in the future when people can d0 amateur astronomy on Mars, they could sit around and lament they can't do it on Pluto...

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

#44

Post by perl4ever »

morlockabove wrote: post #41
perl4ever wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Astronomers, amateur or otherwise, have been complaining about "light pollution" forever. Traditionally, it's about night-time lighting on Earth that isn't shielded from transmitting light upwards. It startled me to find (in a long ago HN thread) that people, presumably nerdy types, are not generally sympathetic to the complaints. I somehow assumed that universal lukewarm quasi-environmental feelings would mean peopl…

The kinds of people who like building things will be less sympathetic to environmental concerns when those concerns are 'don't build that, leave the world untainted by human hand'- there's a difference between polluting by building/placing something of value somewhere and polluting as a pure stupid ugly externality. Engineer-y people might be inclined to hate the latter but not the former.

The aspect of amateur astronomy culture that discouraged me was the awful code published in Sky & Telescope back in the late 80s or early 90s.

They used to have a policy that in order to be compatible with the least common denominator of their readers, they required published programs to be in BASIC. And not just BASIC, but basic BASIC, with line numbers.

As far as I was concerned, it was unreadable and obsolete since about 1985. It also probably influenced me away from ever learning Forth by association.

Not to mention, that when I got a book on astronomical computer algorithms, it turned out that the available implementations were in Fortran, which to my taste was as bad or worse.

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

#45

Post by titzer »

onethought wrote: post #23
midasuni wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The star link complaint seems kind of like how people must have been when telegram/power lines went up.

Power lines still look like garbage, IMHO. After having lived some years in Germany where they are almost universally buried (except high voltage long-haul lines), I can't stop seeing them everywhere in the US. So ugly. Every sky and scene just spoiled with rickety old third-world "oh let's just put this here for now" trash. Like a scratch right across my eyeballs.

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

#46

Post by titzer »

morlockabove wrote: post #41
perl4ever wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Astronomers, amateur or otherwise, have been complaining about "light pollution" forever. Traditionally, it's about night-time lighting on Earth that isn't shielded from transmitting light upwards. It startled me to find (in a long ago HN thread) that people, presumably nerdy types, are not generally sympathetic to the complaints. I somehow assumed that universal lukewarm quasi-environmental feelings would mean peopl…

The kinds of people who like building things will be less sympathetic to environmental concerns when those concerns are 'don't build that, leave the world untainted by human hand'- there's a difference between polluting by building/placing something of value somewhere and polluting as a pure stupid ugly externality. Engineer-y people might be inclined to hate the latter but not the former.

Well, that, and with modern machinery, a global investment economy, and so many construction jobs depending on infinite growth, "build that junk" is the no-brainer solution to everything. Problem is, just a couple "build that junk" people can do so much damage, unless checked by an unusual, overwhelming backlash, we're not slowing down in any measurable way any time soon.

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

#47

Post by peteretep »

giantrobot wrote: post #20
nostromo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't want to suggest this is a _good_ idea, but I spent a lot of time staring directly at the sun as a kid without any apparent damage to my eyes.

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

#48

Post by elihu »

azernik wrote: post #34
amelius wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Anything as big as the Moon is going to be spherical; if Mars' moons were large enough to totally eclipse the Sun, I expect they would be spherical too.

If you get far enough away from the sun you could potentially see a total eclipse with a lumpy moon. Or if the moon has a very low orbit. For Mars, Phobos is probably about as close to an eclipse-with-a-lumpy-moon as you could reasonably expect to get. I think it's not that far above the Roche limit where it would fall apart and turn into a ring, and if it were bigger it would tend to be less lumpy. Potentially you could stretch it into a pancake-shape which would better occlude the sun by spinning it, but I suppose that would also make it more likely to fall apart and turn into a ring.

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

#49

Post by lovemenot »

titzer wrote: post #45
onethought wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The star link complaint seems kind of like how people must have been when telegram/power lines went up.

Power lines still look like garbage, IMHO. After having lived some years in Germany where they are almost universally buried (except high voltage long-haul lines), I can't stop seeing them everywhere in the US. So ugly. Every sky and scene just spoiled with rickety old third-world "oh let's just put this here for now" trash. Like a scratch right across my eyeballs.

Not sure where in the USA you are looking. If it's in a seismically active region there could be factors other than cost and aesthetics. Here in Japan power lines are seldom buried for this reason.
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