the Moon is so shiny

[chasmanian]

I was looking at the Moon today.
its sunny and around 3 pm.
and there in broad daylight is the Moon.

and I thought wow, its around 240,000 miles away, and yet there
it is, reflecting sunlight off of it, so I can see it.

and I thought, it must be very shiny.
I did not look up albedo. right away to refresh my memory.

I did google:
how shiny is the moon that we can see it in daytime

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+shi ... e&ie=UTF-8

and this:

https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentia ... aytime-sky

[Star Dad]

If the moon were the color of sand we'd see in color at night. I guess that's what happens when there is no atmosphere to scatter the light.

Shiny - reminds me of the TV show "Firefly". A GREAT sci-fi bordering on western series and movie. Too bad it got canceled. IMHO one of the best.

[chasmanian]

cool Star Dad.

if the moon was not shiny, would we still see it during the day, because of how big it is?

[Star Dad]

Considering the moon is color of freshly laid asphalt - I'd say that yeah, it really is not shiny. It would be brilliant in daytime if it was. Size really isn't the issue - its the amount of light bouncing off the (very dark) surface that matters. Size only makes it bigger. Basically if it was shiny (aka reflective) we'd essentially have 2 suns.

[chasmanian]

thank you very much Star Dad!!
very interesting.

what if the Moon was black?
and had an albedo of zero.

would we see it in the daytime?

[Star Dad]

The Moon is black. Its albedo is 0.12 or darn near zero. That's black in my book. If it was zero - then, no, we would not see it as a zero implies ALL the light is absorbed and none reflected. And that also implies that we would not see it at night. But we would still see it eclipsing the sun. Hope this clarifies it for you.

[chasmanian]

oh excellent, thanks alot Star Dad.