Community Magazine June 2019

106 Community Magazine the BoyWonder Have You Ever Wondered… Child Prodigy PelehWunder – more commonly known as Peleh the BoyWonder Why is the moon sometimes visible during the day? T he moon is visible sometime during the day for most of the month, except during the new moon phase and right when there’s a full moon. There are two main factors that help explain why we are able to see the moon during the daytime. One is the fact that the moon is highly reflective and close to the Earth, so it is very visible both in the day and night. It might help to think of the sun as a large light bulb, and the moon as a large mirror. When you look at the moon, you are seeing the light which reflects off it from the sun. The moon’s light is not nearly as intense as the sun’s, but it is up to 100,000 times as bright as the brightest nighttime star (which is why we don’t see the stars during the day, but we do see the moon). The other factor involved is the difference in schedules of the rising and setting of the sun and the moon. Because the two do not rise and set at exactly the same times, we see the moon even during the day, when the sun is still in the sky. At full moon, though, the moon is exactly opposite the sun, causing the sun to rise at exactly the time when the moon sets, and vice versa. This gives us a very bright moon in the night sky, when the sun has set, but nothing during the day, when the sun has risen. During the new moon phase, the moon is turned away from Earth, so we don’t see it at all, neither at night nor during the day. Moon Facts & Stats • The moon is a large rocky ball and is the Earth’s natural satellite. • The Earth’s moon is the fifth-largest moon in the solar system. • The moon is 238,855 miles from Earth. • The moon orbits the Earth every 27.3 days. • One side of the moon is always turned away from us and is called its “dark side.” This is because the moon spins around on its axis at exactly the same speed that it orbits the Earth. • A lunar month is the time between one full moon and the next (29.53 days). This is slightly longer than the time it takes for the moon to orbit the Earth, since while the moon is doing its orbit, the Earth is also moving, around the sun. As such, the threesome – sun, Earth, and moon – are not aligned correctly, and a full moon cannot yet occur. The extra two days are needed for everything to become aligned once again, at which point there can be another full moon.