Why does the moon (and planets) reflect so much light if they are just dust and rocks?

Answer 1

Everything you can see is reflecting light. Go to the river and look at the rocks, the trees and the animals around you. If they did not reflect light you would have a difficult time seeing them. The dust on your bookshelf is visible as well, easily. Your bookbag, your carpet and your home all reflect light.

Celestial bodies are just more of the same stuff. So when you see the moon at night, it's reflecting the same light from the sun as you are when somebody is looking at you. The only difference is size. Because the moon is a lot larger than you, it has the surface area to reflect more light.

Answer 2

Cosmo is correct about the Moon only reflecting 10% of the light. But being close to us it looks much brighter than the sky around it.

The rocky planets like Mercury and Mars are close enough to the sun to shine by its light. Venus is almost entirely covered by clouds and is closer to the sun than we are. That's why it shines the brightest of any object other than the Sun and Moon.

The outer planets are comprised of gases and ices which reflect a lot of the sunshine. So you can see Jupiter and Saturn with the naked eye. Finally, you can see Uranus if your skies are dark enough since it shines at magnitude 6 which is generally the darkest object that can be seen with the naked eye.

Neptune and Pluto are too far away to be seen by the naked eye. Neptune can be seen with binoculars or a telescope at magnitude 8 but Pluto takes a large telescope to show, as it is only magnitude 14 which takes a good 10 to 12 inch telescope or better to see.

Answer 3

It may have something to do with the fact that stars are the only source of light. In other words the space around a planet or moon is a totally dark empty void that light cannot reflect off of. Therefore anything against that background is bound to 'shine' to some degree.

Answer 4

it's just like holding a white piece of paper next to a light bulb. the moon (and other planets) reflect the light given off by the sun which has about a billion times greater voltage than a light bulb.

Answer 5

The moon is actually a fairly dark grey---it reflects only about 10 to 20 percent of the sunlight that hits it. It looks bright in contrast to the sky, but is actually about as grey as weathered road blacktop.

For the other planets, you have no basis of comparison, since they are barely resolved. Venus reflects most of the sunlight that hits it. The whitest planet (well, dwarf planet) is actually Pluto, which is as white as snow.

Answer 6

Because the sun is really really bright. They reflect only a fraction of what they receive, but that's a whole lot.

Answer 7

because the sun shines on them....did u take earth science? (or middle school science?)