On Nov 9, 2003, at 12:09 PM, Matthew wrote:
> Remember all that dust in the air. The transparency would suck.
> All your optics would get coated in dust.
Sometimes. But Mars is not dusty all the time. The overall average
transparency is much better than on Earth. But for astronomy nothing
beats the Moon! (Unless it's one of the moons in the outer solar
system beyond the junk that causes the zodical light. Some of the
proposals for space-based infrared scopes put them out by Jupiter. )
-- Bill Arnett bill@No-Spam http://nineplanets.org/ Emerald Hills CA USA 37 27 N 122 15 W