Why is the Moon evenly lit?

Philosophy Forums Science, Technology, and Math
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This is the moon. It is evenly lit by the sun, which is a directional light.

This doesn’t make any sense, because this is the effect directional light has on a sphere surface.

Now Im not a flat earth nutter, but somethings dont seem to add up.

It is also odd how the moon appears exactly as large as the sun.
I have done calculations, and if the sun is 92 million miles away it would look this big

Scientists explain the sun looking bigger by saying the atmosphere scatters light, making it look bigger.
Scientists explain the photographs in space of a big sun by saying the camera has lens flare, and they say if you had a high quality camera the sun would look small.

So why does science give us images like this

implying the sun is actually that large, and the ring in a solar eclipse, is not just a product of halo photon scattering, but the rim of the sun itself. And why do they talk as if the sun is actually that large, when they explain that the moon is exactly 400 times in relation to the sun and earth, through pure dumb luck.

The rational explanation is that this photo is fake.

So explain to me three things
Why is the moon evenly lit
Why does science say the sun appears as large as the moon.
Why does the moon cover the sun perfectly in a perfect ratio of 1:400 through pure dumb luck.

2

`You can see the shadowy edge with a telescope easy. You will also be able to see the curved surface more easily as it wanes. The uniformity is probably doe to the intensity of light.
A full moon is when the face of the moon is directed at the sun. As the month passed it starts to wane, until it forms a sickle and then the angle directs it back again: over the course of the lunar cycle.
I’m not sure why you are puzzled by this. One thing that might be confusing you: The moon rotates at exactly the same rate as it revolves around the earth with the consequence that it keeps it face directly in the same direction towards the earth.
If you think of the moon moving every night, this might be the confusion. But the moon only moves a tiny amount, with respect to the sun. Each night it is the rotating earth that makes the moon appear to move, so the nightly angle to the sun remains the same.

The moon appears the same size as the sun because the moon is only 230,000 miles away, and the sun, although much bigger, is much , much , further away. If you hold up a coin to the moon, first near your eye, then at arms length you will see how distance changes the apparent size. This is called parallax.

On most nights the moon, being near the horizon tends to look relatively bigger when seen behind house, than when it is high in the sky. The same goes for the sun, near familiar things at dusk. This might be why you think that one or the other appears bigger.

The moon did not always cover the sun in an eclipse, and does not actually cover it exactly. as the moon moves ever closer to the earth the apparent size just happens to match. Dumb luck? Yeah, but the universe does not give a damn.

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“At this particular moment in Earth’s history – although the sun’s diameter is about 400 times larger than that of the moon – the sun is also about 400 times farther away. So the sun and moon appear nearly the same size as seen from Earth. And that’s why we on Earth can sometimes witness that most amazing of spectacles, a total eclipse of the sun.”

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I did some more experiments proving that if the sun is 92 million miles away, and the moon and sun is as large as they say it is, then they look almost the exact same size.

This is real science, real philosophy. Science is constantly searching, updating, retesting. I am that science.

However, questions still remain.

Oddities still lurk.

If there is a point light, a ball is not evenly lit. So why does the Sun fullbright the moon? Google cannot answer this.

The original question about the sun and moon size has been answered…but the answer is that it is due to dumb luck that they just so happen to be.

The reason the moon always faces the Earth is not dumb luck, but through tidal gravities. That is easy to swallow, but is the dumb luck that the sun’s diameter is about 400 times larger than that of the moon – the sun is also about 400 times farther away so easy to swallow?

It would be easy to swallow on it’s own, but now you add an additional load - that Earth is also a lifesustaining planet, with evolved lifeforms.

The odds are astronomical that it’s moon would just so happen to also have the dumb fortune of having the sun’s diameter is about 400 times larger than that of the moon – the sun is also about 400 times farther away.

It is likely for one bizarre even to occur somewhere in the galaxy, but astronomical that two bizzarre, unrelated, and astronomically unlikely events happen on the same planet.

And I am uncertain why a directional light like the sun acts like a fullbright on a sphere.

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I used to use that Galaxy simulator your using, its several years old. I tried to remember how to get to out solar system from any position in the known galaxy.

Its not really designed to give a true perspective of the points themselves, but the relativity of the objects to one another, its rather weak in terms of actual detail of any given object.

Your assuming the moon should shade like a painting. This is incorrect. I had to explain this issue with the Turks maintaining Roman Mosaics, everyone was flipping out about two months ago when pictures were linked to the press in the middle of restoration:

Our sense of “aesthetics” has evolved over time, the restored version is to the right, the “older” is to the left. What the Turks primarily did was lift the alterations the French added in the 19th century, its smoothness and gloss, the shading and form lines. The end result looks hideous in comparison, but its closer to the truth. A lot closer to how we actually look honestly as well.

It doesn’t occur to us how much emphasis on artifice underlines our naturalistic drawing methods. When you look at modern CGI formulas, regarding the complicity that goes into actual formulas to mimick “real things”, how hard it was to get the setting sun, or water, just how many failures of assumption underline the whole mess of presumptions we inherited from more orthodox assumptions about art, to make something fake real, you begin to suspect what has really been going on in art all along. Just how real are our realistic drawings? Are they accurate, or a exaggeration beyond nature… a emphasis on the complexities of light, shadow, and form never quite present in actual interactions with grapes and apples in a bowl?

The craft has become so absurd that the artist of such drawings are judged categorically by stock emphasis of effects, and not on the transient dullness which is more accurate of the vast majority of things beheld.

Take the reverse of a natural object to be drawn… a face. Why is the Mona Lisa so famous? Leonardo worked on it tirelessly, constantly tweaking it. It has countless modifications in conflict in it from its stasis, different opinions from different points in time that he thought her look should be. So it is many things. A woman’s face is by its nature something to be looked at, studied, interacted with. Constant interplay between the male observer and female observed. All those different, incongruent adjustments causes a constant reorientation and rereading. It seems intelligent, interactive. Its a off balanced mass on the whole.

Painting a object in stasis lacks this. A shaded ball isn’t nearly as important as a woman’s face as far as studious observation is concerned.

The western mark for mimesis is thought to be higher than that of the traditional Chinese schools, but I think they equally exaggerate their emphasis on rules on what the stock elements of their art should be.

Hold a ball up to the sun, and see if you can find a spot where it sits equally in the light as the moon does from your perspective.

Yes, you notice shade NOW, but is it nearly as shaded as a artist would shade it? No.

Heraclitus was asked what the size of the sun was. He leaned back, raised up his leg, and said it was about the size of his foot.

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Held up a ball to a light bulb. There was a black ring gradient along the outside. I see no such thing when I look at the Moon.

I designed this particular galaxy sim myself, because I wanted to make sure the science was completely right and not rely on believing in hidden math and code.

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Doubt you did, the sim is a free download from years back. Like I said, I recognize your software.

Try the actual sun, and position it so it lights up like the moon.

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Why would the official galaxy sim have background stars larger than the sun? It’s because I didn’t bother to download a high resolution texture into my sim. This is evidence that this is a custom sim of mine.

Your experiment wont work, because atmospheric scattering could be said to diffuse the light and cause it to act as a fullbright.

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If you did the calculations and did them correctly (which, I don’t think
they are) why didn’t you put anything else in the picture for a comparison of size or mention the image will be bigger or smaller on different computer monitors.

The sun is 90 million km away and 1 million km across in diameter, it looks to me pretty much the size you’d expect that to look like.

As for why a full moon is possible, making an image for you right now, just a minute

Here
The yellow lines represent rays of light from the Sun; the green lines represent vision of the Moon from the Earth; black line separates day side of the Earth from night side.

The Moon is always facing the Earth in the same direction, and takes 27 days to go revolve around the planet.
That help?

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Yes I know I did that as a test to make sure you guys are on the right page.

Ok.

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Here
The yellow lines represent rays of light from the Sun; the green lines represent vision of the Moon from the Earth; black line separates day side of the Earth from night side.

The Moon is always facing the Earth in the same direction, and takes 27 days to go revolve around the planet.
That help?

13

Think of it this way. If you look at a ball the front might be 10 inches away, and the sides 11 inches away. The difference is a ratio of 10:11
With this difference the brain can see the parallax.

Now put the smooth ball a couple of feet away so that the ration is now 23:24 inches. The brain is now less able to see the difference. Remember this will only work with the sun behind you, as you don’t want any help from casting a shadow on the ball due to a angle of light.

The moon is 230,00 miles away and has a radius of only 1000 miles. So the ratio is 23:24. It is too far away for you to see the parallax. And too far away to see surface detail which gives the game away.

UNLESS there is a direct shadow on it. When the light is direct as from the sun millions of miles away, and at 90degrees to the surface you won’t have any shadow to help you. In the same way as the ball.

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Not really following the diagram. Lev explained it better.

15

Light is fully hitting the side of the moon we see during a full moon (and hitting a little bit more than one side even because the sun is larger than the moon at light will come down at it from many angles and not just from the side, which can be seen on the night side of the Earth where the sun de

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Because the distance between the sun and the moon is very large and so all the rays of light which come from the sun and reach the moon do so evenly and are perpendicular to the cross-section of the moon.

At close distance a point light source illuminates the moon with its rays of light at all kinds of angles. When the light source is far away all the light rays which will eventually reach the moon are more or less homogenous at an angle which is perpendicular to the cross-section of the moon.

Hence it appears more or less evenly lit, as if lit by a large light screen and not a point light source.