Why does the illumination level in Celestia not fall off the farther from the Sun I go – surely it should be very dark by the time I get to Pluto?
The human eye can adapt to a very wide range of illuminations, so it wouldn’t be as dark out there as you think – about the level of moderate indoor lighting, in which you can see very well. At the other end of the scale, your computer monitor is physically incapable of generating the brightness of illumination that pertains on the inner planets. Fortunately it doesn’t need to, since all that would happen would be that your pupils would constrict to reduce the incoming light to a more comfortable level. So to summarize, A) There’s no way Celestia can display “realistic” brightnesses on your computer screen; but B) such “realism” is unnecessary because your eyes merely adapt to compensate.
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