Have you ever thought about why moon is still visible during the 1st half of the day even though we did say it good night just a couple of hours ago ! !
Well, in any case, Good Morning MOON !
So the Moon being visible during daytime is quite a normal sight for many of us. It’s very unlikely that the Sun will ever take the burden of doing his job for extra hour in the office. Quite rude, duhh ! !
A very common misconception among people is that the moon is directly opposite to the sun in the sky. But in actual reality the moon is only in this position for a single instant in the whole lunar month and that is only during the full moon, when it is exactly 180 degrees away from the sun. The rest of the month it can be anywhere ranging from 0 to 180 degrees away.
Now the first possibility for the moon to be visible during daytime is that the light emitting out of the moon should be strong enough or bright enough that it penetrates through the scattered blue light of the sky.
If you ever try to look at exactly the right spot with a telescope, you can also see Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter in daylight, plus a few of the brightest stars.
Now the second possibility for the moon to be visible in the sky is that it needs to be above the horizon. On average, the moon is above the horizon for about 12 hours a day. Some of those 12 hours are bound to coincide with the sun’s thus producing a daytime moon.
Some Facts About The Moon, Damn wait, The Earth’s Moon.
- The Moon produces no light of its own like the Sun does. Instead, we see the Moon just because of the Sun’s light that the moon reflects back to our eyes.
- The Moon reflects so much of the Sun’s light that it becomes the second brightest object in the sky after the Sun. Although it’s not even close to as bright as the Sun, the Moon is still 100,000 times brighter than the next possible brightest nighttime star
- In reality both sides of the Moon receives the same amount of sunlight however only one face of the Moon is ever seen from the Earth. This is because the Moon rotates around on its own axis in exactly the same time it takes to orbit the Earth, which in turn means that the same side is always facing the Earth. The side facing away from Earth has only been seen by the human eye provided he or she is traveling in a spacecraft.
- After keen observation is has been found that the Moon is moving approximately 3.8 cm away from our planet Earth every year. It is estimated that it will continue to do so for the next 50 billion years or so. By the time this happens, the Moon will be taking for about 47 days to rotate round the Earth instead of the current 27.3 days.