You could use the Lantern on a Stick at night and a flashlight, assuming you have a 1H weapon in your central slots. (or a two-hander there and switching between it and flashlight) That gives you enough light to see whats near you, but for mining you either have to dig more or bring brighter light sources with you.
Unfortunately the lantern or lantern/flashlight is not nearly enough. I am looking for something that would, for example, change night from "gameplay altering" to "mere ambiance." I guess similar to what you see in most MMOs, where nightime is mostly just a tinting.
The sheer darkness of Starbound might not be such a problem if I had Terraria's "shift" tool convenience, something that I sincerely hope will get added back to Starbound. (I could see this sort of thing being a tech-ish thing, even; really, I can see a lot of such convenience things/items/functions being implemented as techs, although it would require many more tech slots as well as the ability to have more than one active a time, and probably the ability to research them independent of simply being found.)
That said, there are mods for brighter backpack lanterns and one for a 360-degree flashlight which is pretty nice, so I've heard.
I think I saw that in my cursory googling, but unfortunately it was a head item. I guess it shouldn't be
too difficult to just make it a back item for my personal purposes.