An artist's concept of a meteor shower, as seen on Mars. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) The Mars-like deserts of the American Southwest are some of Earth’s most iconic stargazing grounds. Far from pestering city lights and free from regular cloud cover, they provide a starry-skied sanctuary for lovers of the night. So, it would stand to reason that the deserts of Mars itself would be even more idyllic. After all, there’s no light pollution and cloud cover is hard to come by. And to some degree, that’s true. It doesn’t get much darker than nighttime on the Red Planet. And Mars’ atmosphere is so weak — just one percent of Earth’s — that the stars don’t twinkle.
But the Red Planet provides another complication: dust. Even straight overhead at zenith — the region where atmospheric interference is the least — the dust decreases a star’s brightness by one whole magnitude. That gets ...
