How come you can see the moon durring the day and night?

Question

How come you can see the moon all night sometimes, then during the day as well. I've read a couple of other answers saying we share it with China for 12 hours a day, but if we have it all night and some of the day it doesn't add up to 12 hours. I don't know if you understand my question, but I'm just trying to figure out why it seems like you can see the moon all the time, day or night.

Answer 1

I wondered that too....but I noticed it's really no all the time.  It's that the times when the other side of the world DOESN'T see the moon, is when WE do all of the time. (and vice-versa)

There, that's my layman answer.  Hopefully someone has a better one.

Answer 2

The moon orbits the earth in 27.321 days.

Obviously this is not the same length as a month.

Therefore the visibility of the moon varies from one night or day to the next: depending on your location it will be visible during the night or day.

Moonset and moonrise  are around 48 minutes later per day.

Refer to the excellent explanation below.

I have also included links which will give you data on moonrise and moonset for your (and any other) location.

Answer 3

Its because the moon IS THERE. You could see stars too if the sun went out ( at day ).

Answer 4

The Moon goes around the Earth.  Half the time, the Moon is on the Sun-side of the Earth, and we see it during the day.  The other half of the time, the Moon is on the dark side of the Earth, and we see it at night instead.  But you'll never see it for more than 12 hours at a time.  China sees the same Moon as us, since the phase and timing of the Moon depends on it's orbit, not our rotation, but they don't see it at the same time as us - it's not up during our night and their day on the same day.

Answer 5

There are many misconceptions about astronomy, one is the the moon is up at night.  The moon spends as much time in the day sky as it does in the night sky.  Also, unlike stars it is bright enough to be seen in a daylight sky.

The full moon is up all night, it is opposite in the sky from the sun, so it will rise about sunset and set at sunrise.

About two weeks later the opposite is true.  The new moon is up all day.  Now we can't see a new moon, but at most times the moon is somewhere in between, at a crescent, quarter, or gibbous phase.  For instance the first quarter phase moon will rise at about noon and set at about midnight, so it is easy to see in the afternoon hours.

Answer 6

what we see as the moon is a reflection of light from the surface. during the night we see it clearest because theres no other light. during the day the sun still reflects light off the moon surface and while it may be faint, we can still see it.