Why does the moon appear during the day sometimes?

Answer 1

I dig up an astronomy book and find the Moon's relative brightness. The Full Moon has about 1/400,000th the brightness of the Sun. Yet the Full Moon sheds enough light that we can read a newspaper at night. It's over 33,000 times brighter than Sirius, which helps explain why, in the daytime, we don't see Sirius but do see the Moon.

I read that the Moon has one of the lowest reflectivities of all the objects in the Solar System. Curious. It looks bright and white even with an average reflectivity of an asphalt parking lot.

Almost every day in a lunar month, we can see the daytime Moon. The days we cannot are when the Moon is Full, when it's New, and a few days before and after the New Moon.

An exactly Full Moon is invisible (or at least not easily seen) during the day because then the Moon is opposite the Sun with the Earth in between. The Full Moon sets when the Sun rises (except near the poles) so we can't see the Moon during the day. It's below the horizon, shining brilliantly on the other side--the night side--of Earth.

When the Moon is New it will be dark and unseen and, for at least two days either side of the New Moon, the Crescent Moon will be "too faint and close to the Sun to be seen with the naked eye--although it might be glimpsed at sunset," says Robert Massey, astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich.

The Moon is close to Earth and that's why we see bright sunlight reflected from its asphalt-parking-lot surface even in the daytime and even when part of the Moon is in shadow. Step outside on or about the 14th of June, and find the daytime Moon. It's there--a shiny half moon, high and West.

(Answered by April Holladay, science correspondent, June 13, 2001)

http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~huffman/daymn.html

Answer 2

Where did you go to school? Everybody knows that the moon is the back side of the Sun. When you see the moon during the day, you are actually seeing a double reflection of the back side of the Sun (the Moon) which is reflected off the interior surface of the "Firmament" (Where God keeps the water he used for Noah's flood) it is then re-reflected to the opposite interior side of the Firmament where it appears normal in the sky. I hope this explains it for you.

Answer 3

hold a flashlight in one hand and a baseball in the other hand. turn on the flashlight and turn out the lights. hold the flashlight and the baseball out from your body with your elbows locked and the baseball and flashlight 3 feet apart. shine the flashlight at the elbow of your baseball hand. ok so the flashlight is the sun and the baseball is the moon. your face is the earth. the moon revolves around the earth sometimes the moon and sun get into a position that you are in right now. being the flashlight is putting light on your face, it is daytime, and you can see that half of the baseball is in the light. that is how you can see the moon during the daytime. you see the sun's light shining on the moon. remember, the moon does not produce light it only shines in the light from the sun. just like how your baseball is visible in the light from the flashlight.

Answer 4

You can see the Moon in the daytime because it is big and brightly lit by the Sun. The surface of the Moon is about as reflective as an asphalt road--rather dark but not totally black. When you look at the Moon, you are seeing the light which reflects off it. This is not nearly as bright as the Sun, but it is up to 100,000 times as bright as the brightest nighttime star.

Answer 5

The Moons visibility relies upon on its area. while it somewhat is 'new' it lies immediately between the Earth and the sunlight and for this reason it somewhat is invisible as a results of fact the sunlit area of the Moon is dealing with removed from the Earth and additionally as a results of fact it somewhat is lost interior the Suns glare. the only time as quickly as we can see the hot Moon is in the process image voltaic eclipse. The Moon then pulls away east from the sunlight (relative to the Suns place interior the sky) and so turns into seen interior the night sky as a crescent. in case you may think of, as quickly as the sunlight has achieved 1 / 4 of its orbit around the Earth, the attitude between the sunlight and Moon is ninety ranges at which factor we are saying the Moon has reached 1st quarter and is seen as a nil.5 disk interior the afternoon and night sky. It then keeps in its orbit till it reaches a nil.5 way around its orbit, via which era it somewhat is obviously finished. in this time it somewhat is going to nevertheless upward push in the previous the sunlight instruments and so would be seen extremely prominently interior the east/south-east in the process the afternoon. via the time it reaches finished it somewhat is going to be immediately opposite the sunlight interior the sky and so rises as a results of fact the sunlight instruments. After finished, the opposite situation occurs and because it strikes by final quarter and lower back in direction of new. it somewhat is then seen interior the morning sky till it disappears lower back into the Suns glare. somewhat the extra advantageous the elongation between the sunlight and the Moon, the longer it somewhat is seen in the process the day.

Answer 6

it usually appears during evening, because the moon light win again the sun light. so that the moon visible.

Answer 7

Because it orbits the Earth, and it's bright enough to see during the day.

Answer 8

Because it is getting closer. Too close. If my calculations are correct it will smash into the earth in about 45 seconds.

Answer 9

Its always there, just not visible.