there's something magical about the sky. looking at its blue dome always makes me feel more refreshed, both physically and mentally. the blue gradient and the occasional blotches of fluffy white clouds remind of how vast and boundless our world is. birds darting across makes the view even more satisfying.
but are all skies this good?
for someone like me, and the 7 billion others on this planet, this answer is probably "no". and mars is a good example to understand why this might be the case.
on our planetary neighbor, the sky is mostly red-pinkish with occasional thin clouds barely visible — at least according to photos i found on the internet. if these pictures portray the martian sky in a way that resembles how the human eyes would perceive it, then it's bad. really, really bad.
novelty of being on another planet aside, gazing at the sky above mars is nothing short of depressing, with its faint colors and what one might describe as a "lack of commitment to be a sky". of course, the barely-there atmosphere and the distant sun play a huge part in the paltry display.
heck, the view from an atmosphere-less celestial body might be more enjoyable considering the unobstructed view it may allow to the billions of stars dotting the sky.
as a fellow earth inhabitant, you probably agree on most, if not all, what's above. the real question however is in what would a martian-born person who never visited the earth think.
my guess is that such people might grow to truly enjoy their local sky and its colors, which end up evoking, in them, the same set of emotions as ours to us. having the pinkish hue as the backdrop of their most cherished memories might give it an endearing quality we won't be able to fathom.
used to their dull dome, martian humans on visit to their ancestral home can have one of two reactions. some might find its vibrant nature awe inspiring and so refreshing. others would hate its too vibrant, too distracting colors. which one will constitute the majority is a question i'm unable to answer.
what i would really be interested to see is the poetry that the martian sky would inspire and how martian poets would describe it. would earth-bound readers be able to enjoy such literature? would the spatial gap between us and the contemporary martians be greater than the temporal gap between us and our fellow earthlings from centuries past?
see you tomorrow.