Moon's reflection?

Question

what is the reason that the moon reflects 10% of the sunlght?

Answer 1

The amount of light something reflects is known as its albedo.

It is primarily to do with its colour.   The moon is a nice whitey grey colour, and so shows up brightly when the sun shines on it.

Answer 2

"The moon appears as a relatively bright object in the sky, in spite of its low albedo. The Moon is about the poorest reflector in the solar system and reflects only about 7% of the light incident upon it (about the same proportion as is reflected by a lump of coal).Color constancy in the visual system recalibrates the relations between the colours of an object and its surroundings, and since the surrounding sky is comparatively dark the sunlit Moon is perceived as a bright object." -- Wikipedia

Answer 3

the moon basically is light gray/white-there is nothing there to absorb light, so it bounces off. compare the sunlight reflecting off the snow during winter, to the sunlight reflecting off the green grass of summer.........

Answer 4

From what I have learnt in physics so far this year, there are two types of reflections - specular reflection and diffuse reflection.

Specular reflection is the complete reflection of light along a plane as in in a mirror, where parallel light rays hitting the mirror is also reflected as parallel rays. Diffuse reflection is where the light scatters as it hits an object due to its uneven surface at the microscopic level. Diffuse reflection is the reason that we see things as we normally do in the world.

The reason that the moon reflects 10% of sunlight is probably because the other 90% is reflected in other directions instead of towards the earth, due to diffuse reflection (as the moon's surface is uneven).

Hope that helps

Answer 5

the sun shining on the moon is like like a flashlite  shining on a tennis ball..

the sun would be the flashlite , the ball would be the earth

get it ?

Answer 6

Moon reflects 10% of sunlight because it doesn't have its own light as it is a satellite.So 10% of the light reflected by sun is taken up by moon..That is why moon reflects 10% of the sunlight..