Why does the moon always have a dark side?

wrote in message news:40735763.7140.A8CBF0@localhost...
title says it all

Because there is only one sun?

Actually the "dark" side can be lit up quite a bit from reflected Earthshine
when the angles are right.

wrote:

title says it all

The Moon is lit by the Sun. The Sun is off to one side of the Moon.
One side lit, one side dark. You would need two suns to light both
sides at the same time.

--
John Popelish

On Wed, 07 Apr 2004 01:20:35 -0400, wrote:

title says it all

Over the course of a lunar day (29.5 earth days) all sides of the moon
receive sunlight. If you are operating under the assumption that one
particular side of the moon *never* recieves light, you are mistaken.

The "dark side" of the moon refers to the "forbidden" side that is
never viewed directly from earth (or at least has not been viewed
directly for eons) because the same side of the moon always faces us.

Regards,

Squishua


(remove the capital letters from my e-mail address to contact me)

Ahh..so what kind of light fill ratio should one use to bring out the
shadows nicely?

How much depth of field would you need to get the whole moon in focus?

Would you tell the moon to say "cheese"?



On 7-Apr-2004, John Popelish wrote:

wrote:

title says it all

The Moon is lit by the Sun. The Sun is off to one side of the Moon.
One side lit, one side dark. You would need two suns to light both
sides at the same time.

--
John Popelish

wrote in message news:40735763.7140.A8CBF0@localhost...
title says it all


No such thing as the dark side of the moon. Matter of fact, its all dark.

(Blatantly stolen from Floyd)

In article 40735763.7140.A8CBF0@localhost, wrote:
title says it all


one side of the moon is heavier then the other. the heavy side was/is
attracted by earth's gravity and over the many many years has stabilized so
only one 'side' of the moon faces the earth.

http://www.edu-observatory.org/eo/moon.html

In finite wisdom answered:
title says it all

There's only one light source, the sun, and it can only
illuminate half (more or less) of a sphere.

Every planet has a dark side. Beware the dark side Luke....

Rich

wrote:

title says it all

Any light seen from the Moon is relected light. Since the only
significan t source of the light is from the Sun and there is only one
Sun, then only one side of the Moon is lit up by the Sun.

Bob Kolker

"Robert J. Kolker" wrote:

wrote:

title says it all

Any light seen from the Moon is relected light. Since the only
significan t source of the light is from the Sun and there is only one
Sun, then only one side of the Moon is lit up by the Sun.

Bob Kolker


We (posters) should add that only half of the spheroid is illuminated,
a opposed to more than half, because the illumination source is far
enough away to approximate a point source.