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I like the moon, but...

SquishyDave

Graduate Poster
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May 27, 2003
Messages
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I like the moon, but not as much as a spoon.

But seriously, when it's night time, the moon is a pretty orangey yellow sort of colour, but the lava flood planes that make up the shape of a bunny rabbit are dark grey, or even black.

But in the day the moon is white, the exact same white as fluffy clouds, and the lava flood planes that make up the shape of a bunny are blue, the exact same blue as the sky.

Why, if the moon is made of grey coloured rock and dust, is it not grey at night, and why is it white like clouds in the day.

I know why the lava flood planes that make up the bunny shape are black at night and blue at day, but why the rest?
 
Off my head, I would think it is the same reason. The yellow/gray night colors are the colors we see when seing sunlight reflected from the surface of the moon and filtered through the atmosphere.

The white/blue day look comes when you add the bright blue of the day sky.


Hans
Hans
 
I'm guessing that it's atmospheric. The colour of the moon in Sydney is very much affected by pollution in the Sydney basin. During the last two summer bushfire seasons, the colour of the sun has been similarly affected.

Do you remember about 12 years ago when there was a huge volcanic eruption in the Pacific and the colour of our night sky was affected for about 6 months?
 
reprise said:
I'm guessing that it's atmospheric. The colour of the moon in Sydney is very much affected by pollution in the Sydney basin. During the last two summer bushfire seasons, the colour of the sun has been similarly affected.

Do you remember about 12 years ago when there was a huge volcanic eruption in the Pacific and the colour of our night sky was affected for about 6 months?
Click to expand...

Mount Pinatubo 1991. It affected the sunsets of people half a world away.
 
unimformed speculation

The surrounding color might affect our perception of the moon's color, too, the same way the surrounding colors on that chessboard illusion makes the squares seem to be different colors.

Also, maybe during the day, the brightness of the atmosphere "washes out" the moon. Since the moon appears much brighter at night, it's easier to perceive the colors that are always there.
 
Thanks all,

So far we have atmospheric filtering as a theory, or surrounding colour affecting it, due to illusion. But I suspect it's atmospherics more than illusion.

The moon can get very reddish when near the horizon, like the sun can, but why should atmosphere filter the moon to be the yellowish colour at night, but the exact white of fluffy clouds in the day?

If the moon is reflecting grey light at the earth, I can understand how it might look white in the day, but why should it look orange at night, the sun is not really orange is it? It gives off close enough to white light that we can't tell the difference, so why after bouncing off the moon and being filtered through the atmosphere should it be yellowish.

Maybe we should ask the zeppelins, as they are up higher than the moon.

And Pillory didn't hack my account, I was channeling him, I am going for the million dollars next week. :)
 
I repeat: The moon appears yellow at night (a wide scale of yellow, from near white to orange, depending on hight over horizon and atmospheric conditions) because that is the light proper we receive from it after filtering. During the day, the bright blue is added to this, because the blue sky is in front of the moon, you see it through the blue sky. Thus, the yellow parts become whiter, and the dark parts become blue.

Hans ;)
 
More importantly, is the rabbit the Easter Bunny? Some say yes, some no.

Personally I believe so. I think he stashes the chocolate eggs somewhere behind the Milky Way...

Athon
 
MRC_Hans said:
I repeat: The moon appears yellow at night (a wide scale of yellow, from near white to orange, depending on hight over horizon and atmospheric conditions) because that is the light proper we receive from it after filtering. During the day, the bright blue is added to this, because the blue sky is in front of the moon, you see it through the blue sky. Thus, the yellow parts become whiter, and the dark parts become blue.

Hans ;)
Click to expand...
Thanks that helps a lot. It sounds good to me. I just needed that extra info to fully understand what you meant.

Keneke said:
And puffins too, they go quite high.
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Maybe not as high as the moon.
 
One of the astronauts described the moon as looking like a dirty ashtray. It has the sasme albedo as asphalt (10%). So I would say that most of it is interaction with the atmosphere.
 
Look at Buzz Aldrin's knees in my avatar (or a high-res version of the original image). When they squatted to pick up objects on the surface, the astronauts got dust on their suits. The dust is gunpowder gray. The surface of the Moon is difficult to categorize as to color. It's really gray, but in the images it can look white due to exposure, or the Sun angle.
 
I thought the moon's albedo was lower than ten percent... closer to seven percent. The moon is a dark body.

One of the recurring stories in Andrew Chaikin's "A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts" is that people were actually surprised by how dark the moon was (even though they knew in advance that it reflected very little light). According to Chaikin, one of the first things Neil Armstrong did upon returning to lunar orbit was to surprise Mike Collins with how dark the lunar soil was, like graphite. And researchers back on Earth were astonished to find that lunar rocks resembled "burnt potatoes."
 
Thanks guys, I thought the moon was light grey. Clearly not, I guess it's mostly atmosphere then.
 
Brown said:
I thought the moon's albedo was lower than ten percent... closer to seven percent. The moon is a dark body.

One of the recurring stories in Andrew Chaikin's "A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts" is that people were actually surprised by how dark the moon was (even though they knew in advance that it reflected very little light). According to Chaikin, one of the first things Neil Armstrong did upon returning to lunar orbit was to surprise Mike Collins with how dark the lunar soil was, like graphite. And researchers back on Earth were astonished to find that lunar rocks resembled "burnt potatoes."
Click to expand...

Yep, yep and yep.

I, like many amateur astronomers, have a filter for viewing the moon when it's lit to any significant percentage. Mine's variable, which is nice.

You folks think the full moon is bright cuz you can walk in the dark by it, read (?) by it, see shadows cast by it (I like those)?

Try it through a scope...that bitch is blazing. In a way it's worse that you only see it through the one eye at a time. When you stand up from the eyepiece, it's like being blind in one eye. :D

All that with such a low albedo!
Ugh...sunlight strong!
 
JamesMGMDP said:


Try it through a scope...that bitch is blazing. In a way it's worse that you only see it through the one eye at a time. When you stand up from the eyepiece, it's like being blind in one eye. :D

All that with such a low albedo!
Ugh...sunlight strong!
Click to expand...

Sure is, I've experienced that effect many times. Kinda cool when observing the moon and birds and/or a plane crosses the field of view.
 
JamesMGMDP said:
I, like many amateur astronomers, have a filter for viewing the moon when it's lit to any significant percentage. Mine's variable, which is nice.

You folks think the full moon is bright cuz you can walk in the dark by it, read (?) by it, see shadows cast by it (I like those)?

Try it through a scope...that bitch is blazing. In a way it's worse that you only see it through the one eye at a time. When you stand up from the eyepiece, it's like being blind in one eye. :D
Click to expand...
I hear that, my filter isn't variable, but it's does the job.
 
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