Why does the moon "shine"?

Answer 1

It's reflecting sunlight off of it

Answer 2

The Moon (capital M if you mean Earth's natural satellite) is relatively dark and reflects about 12% of the light that hits its surface.

In photography (at least in the "good ol' days" of Black & White), anything that reflects less than 18% is considered dark (not black, but dark).

Still, the luminosity of the Sun, at our distance from it, still provides a flux of 1370 Watts per square metre. When that light hits our eyes, we interpret it as "apparent magnitude -26".

The Moon (diameter = 3475 km) has a cross-section of 9,484,174 square km. Let us call it 9.5 x 10^12 square metres (one million square metres in a square km). So the Moon intercepts 1.3 x 10^16 Watts.

The Full Moon appears brighter than a crescent Moon. However, I'm simply going to calculate things as if the Moon rebroadcasts 12% of what it intercepts along a hemisphere.

We are 3.8 x 10^8 m from the Moon (I've taken some off to account for the fact that we are on the surface of Earth, not at the centre). The area of a hemisphere of this radius is (0.5*4*pi*r^2): 9 x 10^17 square metres.

Thus, the average flux we get from the Moon is 0.014 W/m^2. (This is assuming that the lunar flux is spread out evenly in all directions, which is not the case; but I hate doing double integrals on a text keyboard)

The Sun appears (1370/0.014=) 95,600 times brighter than the Moon. The log (in base 10) of the ratio is almost 5. Each step in magnitude corresponds to a log difference of 0.4 so that the Moon should appear almost 13 magnitudes dimmer than the Sun. Wiki gives -12.74 as the magnitude f the Moon and -26.8 for the Sun (a difference of 14).

So our approximation of 13 magnitudes dimmer is not too bad.

I still have the Moon almost three times too bright but then, we avoided those nasty double integrals.

Answer 3

If you're talking about the Moon around the Earth, it's because of sunlight reflecting from it.

If you're talking about the Hillbilly drink Moonshine, it's because after you take a couple mouth-fulls of it, you would have a "sh*t-eating grin" on your face.

You would feel a lot of euphoria, somewhat like "feel no pain."

Answer 4

It's the light of the sun being reflected off of its surface, which is white. Take a sheet of paper underneath a lamp and you'll get a similar effect.

Answer 5

the sun's reflection bouncing off the surface

Answer 6

Light refraction from the sun.

Answer 7

it's reflecting sunlight off of it

Answer 8

go back to elementary school!!!!!!