Yeah this currently happens on OpenGL (linux and Mac), I'll release a version fixing this in the future. If you're on windows make sure your reflections are enabled.
This happens randomly to some users, disable all the "scaled adjust" settings to fix it, including scaled contrast brightness etc, they're in the atmo settings. I'll have a version fixing it out in the future.
What 838.1 version?
1. Correct
2. You can switch to scatterer's SMAA, it's even cheaper than TAA. You can't use the in-game AA anymore, if you modify scatterer's source so that it no longer forces it off you'll get black artifacts.
Looks like broken city lights config, don't know more than that.
No idea, best to look at the KSP.log file for errors.