It’s so cold how is Garak not under a heat lamp 24/7
You’re right Dukat just lays down in his old office on a yoga looking Mat because he was waiting for Sisko and got cold
You know this is fascinating bc I never really thought about the fact that Cardassians are most comfortable in low light warmth, which is an odd combination. It suggests the Cardassian homeworld is very warm, but low light for some reason. A thick insulating atmosphere a la Venice, or maybe their Sun is some odd type that emits a lot of radiation while being visibly dim. Or, another option, Cardassians are nocturnal. Mmm...
This is brilliant
Some kind of Uv light could possibly work
If I remembering the star charts book correctly, their sun is larger and cooler than ours. Now “cooler” in this sense means “cooler than other stars” - which translates primarily into light (electromagnetic) emissions primarily at longer wavelengths. Also according to star charts book, the Cardassian sun has a higher luminosity - i.e. emits more electromagnetic/light energy - than Earth’s sun.
This means that the Cardassian sun is sending out a lot more light, but at longer wavelengths.
Longer wavelengths in terms of the Cardassian sun would mean a lot of light in infrared, red and orange ranges, and less light in the blue-violet-UV range than Earth’s sun.
Infrared light or radiation is not visible to humans, but we do experience it - this is the energy from the sun (and from a fire, or a stove, etc) we experience as heat.
Therefore, I think it likely that the environment on Cardassia has red-shifted light, compared to Earth, possibly lower visible light intensity than Earth, and is likely much warmer, as more of their stars energy is being emitted as infrared radiation.
A Cardassian probably would enjoy a heat lamp exactly like Earth reptiles bc these lamps are emitting mostly infrared and red light - it would make a Cardassian feel like they were at a day at the beach.
Canonically, the Cardassian sauna has both reddish light and heated rocks, so I think the heat mats idea is great too.
UV light would probably not be preferable, as Cardassians would not be adapted to high UV.
I just gotta say this is my favorite thing about being in the Star Trek fandom. Someone knows the exact type of Star a fictional planet has and scientifically what frequency and wavelength of light it would emit and how that would affect a race of a fictional species of reptile aliens and they know this because they’ve done detailed research into this fictional sun to calculate the length of a fictional culture’s year. The best part about this is we can extrapolate this information only because the TV shows producers and creators understands their audience well enough to know they want as much detail as they can get, and actually released fictional Star charts.
Amazing. Love it. This is completely normal and happens all the time in Star Trek fandom. It’s like people knowing elvish from LOTR but make it sci-fi.
I always head-canoned them as using heated sand “beds,” especially when gravid.
