Moon as reflected light

Perhaps a stupid inquiry, but at what point in antiquity did it become
generally realized that the moon did not produce its own light but
that it was light reflected from the sun? I'm sure that with the
lunar phases being commonly observable by all, and the lunar and solar
eclipses being somewhat predictable by a few, it probably became
obvious pretty early on that light from the moon was not original but
reflected.

In 1958 in my Welch nanny's case. She firmly believed the Moon was
on fire - that is how we could see it, because her husband had told her
this was the case many years before. I told her this could not be the case

but she said the light of the moon was a soft glowing light, so it must be

a slowe cold fire, like the slow burning coal fires she had seen on coal
slag heaps in Calgaray when she lived there and her husband was a miner.
She also claimed to see and talk with angels in the air, one of which was
her father and her dead brother Charlie. Anna had a powerful influence
on me growing up, in the home of my grandmother who was a mathematician,
physicist, and educator ... whoe never could come to terms with Anna's
"foolish beliefs"!
Jerry



"G. Carlson" wrote:

Perhaps a stupid inquiry, but at what point in antiquity did it become
generally realized that the moon did not produce its own light but
that it was light reflected from the sun? I'm sure that with the
lunar phases being commonly observable by all, and the lunar and solar
eclipses being somewhat predictable by a few, it probably became
obvious pretty early on that light from the moon was not original but
reflected.

In 1958 in my Welch nanny's case. She firmly believed the Moon was
on fire - that is how we could see it, because her husband had told her
this was the case many years before. I told her this could not be the case

but she said the light of the moon was a soft glowing light, so it must be

a slowe cold fire, like the slow burning coal fires she had seen on coal
slag heaps in Calgaray when she lived there and her husband was a miner.
She also claimed to see and talk with angels in the air, one of which was
her father and her dead brother Charlie. Anna had a powerful influence
on me growing up, in the home of my grandmother who was a mathematician,
physicist, and educator ... whoe never could come to terms with Anna's
"foolish beliefs"!
Jerry



"G. Carlson" wrote:

Perhaps a stupid inquiry, but at what point in antiquity did it become
generally realized that the moon did not produce its own light but
that it was light reflected from the sun? I'm sure that with the
lunar phases being commonly observable by all, and the lunar and solar
eclipses being somewhat predictable by a few, it probably became
obvious pretty early on that light from the moon was not original but
reflected.

Strange as it sounds....
I still come across people that think the moon produces it's own light.
I've no idea when it was first discovered that the moon just reflected light
from the Sun.

Good question!

--

Don Baker
www.geocities.com/thebugbomber

Strange as it sounds....
I still come across people that think the moon produces it's own light.
I've no idea when it was first discovered that the moon just reflected light
from the Sun.

Good question!

--

Don Baker
www.geocities.com/thebugbomber

Don Baker wrote:
Strange as it sounds....
I still come across people that think the moon produces it's own light.

Eh? Of course it does. How else does the Sun get illuminated?

Don

Don Baker wrote:
Strange as it sounds....
I still come across people that think the moon produces it's own light.

Eh? Of course it does. How else does the Sun get illuminated?

Don

People at least the educated ones knew that the sun produced its own light
during rthe Roman times, also during the greek and possible even the Egyptions
and Babalonians even knew that the moon was illuminated by the sun. Lunar
eclipses happen more frequently than solar eclipes or rather they are viewed
over a much larger area. If the moon shined by its own light then you would not
see a lunar eclipse. Further more the Roman's had at least known that the moon
sometimes get illuminated by the Earth's light that in turn is reflected back
to us.

Clear Skies
Dwight L Bogan

People at least the educated ones knew that the sun produced its own light
during rthe Roman times, also during the greek and possible even the Egyptions
and Babalonians even knew that the moon was illuminated by the sun. Lunar
eclipses happen more frequently than solar eclipes or rather they are viewed
over a much larger area. If the moon shined by its own light then you would not
see a lunar eclipse. Further more the Roman's had at least known that the moon
sometimes get illuminated by the Earth's light that in turn is reflected back
to us.

Clear Skies
Dwight L Bogan

G. Carlson wrote in message . ..

Perhaps a stupid inquiry, but at what point in antiquity did it become
generally realized that the moon did not produce its own light but
that it was light reflected from the sun?

Good question. My guess is that this realization was pre-historic,
but I don't have any evidence to back that up. Certainly, the
ancient Greeks understood this just fine; they used lunar eclipses
to measure the relative sizes of the Earth and Moon, from which
they deduced the distance to the Moon pretty accurately. The
sense of the Earth's shadow sweeping across the Moon is pretty
visceral during a lunar eclipse; it doesn't seem like much of
a stretch even as an independent discovery by somebody with
no education at all.

I would think that once people began to record data on eclipses,
and discovered the fundamental principle of astrology -- that
the Sun is "in" constellations even though you can't see them
then -- that they could hardly help realizing this fact about
the Moon. All of that was already in place at the time of the
earliest astronomical records.

I'll ask around.

- Tony Flanders