3 ms·

I am expecting light pollution to follow us there also

• formerly_proven 6y ago
  As I understand it, habitats would need to be under some ground, and there really isn't much to do outside. So what'd be the point of lighting the surface up?
• keyle 6y ago
  Isn't light pollution due to bouncing off the atmosphere's content? Ipso facto, no atmo => no light pollution looking up a circled lens?
  • elihu 6y ago
    The article mentions dust in the atmosphere being a problem.
  • azernik 6y ago
    Mars has enough atmosphere (and dust!) that there's stuff for light to bounce off of. e.g. the article notes that the dust actually produces longer twilights than on Earth, because dust scatters more light than Earth's relatively low-dust air.
• elihu 6y ago
  Well, if you don't have a bunch of pedestrians wandering around outside and people don't generally drive to the store in single-occupant vehicles, you don't really have much need for streetlamps either. Maybe at some point when the population gets large enough that you'd have imported problems from Earth like random people stealing the Martian equivalent of a CD player and catalytic converter off your rover in the middle of the night, then security lighting may be a thing. The main use I can think of for outside lighting in the short term would be people doing construction work at night. That might actually be preferred from a radiation point of view; I know Mars doesn't have much protection from radiation, but I'm not sure how much comes directly from the sun versus random ambient radiation in space. Another possible source of light pollution would be greenhouses with big windows that are lit with artificial light at night.