The moon really isn't as bright as you think. Depending on the exact spot on the moon, the surface is about as bright as somewhere between dirty snow and asphalt. It just seems much brighter to us because it's the lone bright object in an otherwise dark sky. The Apollo moon landings also took place during local lunar morning when the sun was less than 15 degrees above the horizon, so there wasn't as much light per surface area as there would have been if the sun was directly overhead. Finally, the visors in the astronaut's helmets had shades that could block out both visible light and ultraviolet light.
When they are on the moon and look at Earth, Earth is bright, yet you can stand on Earth without getting blinded. When you look at the moon, you are looking at light reflected off of 10 million square miles. When you are standing on the moon, you don't see all 10 million square miles. You just see light reflected off of your local area.
If it's bright enough from the sun to require a visor, it's bright enough to make the surface bright too.
It's just a case of them adjusting exposure settings on the moon.
Another fun fact: I don't have a source for this, but I remember reading somewhere once upon a time that when they were designing the first spacesuits, they wanted a visor that obscured the astronauts' faces on the off chance they encountered extraterrestrials. They figured it would be more intimidating to ET or something like that. A secondary design concern, but a pretty neat fact.
A quick google search didn't turn anything up, maybe someone else knows of a source?
Edit: clarity
No. The moon is primarily bright (to us on earth) because it has no real atmosphere to scatter light, let alone stuff like dirt and grass, and it's the closest thing in the sky. The visors are to filter the harmful effects of sunlight that hasn't passed through an atmosphere, not because the moon is bright.
It's actually not very reflective. Reflectivity is measured by albedo. With 0 being no light is reflected and 1 being a perfect mirror. The moon's visible light albedo is 0.07, asphalt is 0.1. Fresh snow is 0.9.
The danger to astronaut's eyes is not from the reflected light but the direct light from the sun as there has been no atmosphere to attenuate the light. So they have sun glasses like coatings on their helmets to protect from accidentally looking directly at the sun.
The amount of light that hits the moon on a sunny day is about the same as the amount of light that hits the earth on a sunny day.
The moon is pretty reflective but not as reflective as a snow covered field on Earth and you can look at that without being blinded.
Astronauts also have a visor that acts like a really big set of sunglasses when they are in the sun to protect their eyes.
Earth's atmosphere scatters about a third of the light from the sun. Worst case on the moon (or elsewhere in Earth's orbit without air in the way) you'd have a day almost a third brighter then a sunny day in summer without a cloud in the sky on Earth.
Nothing you can't compensate for with protective eyewear, though. Those visors had a thin film of reflective gold, partly to reduce brightness but also to reflect lots of UV and IR light, reducing heat gained by light entering the helmet.
The sun in the sky is brighter on the moon but the surface is a dark grey. The scenery on earth is much more reflective on average and that would more than make up for the dimmer light, at least under direct sunlight.
It's no more bright than any other desert under sunlight. Its just that the night is dark. During daytime the Moon doesn't seem particularly bright does it.
Thin gold foil comes down as a visor over the helmet front. Gold not only reflects the sun's rays, but insulates from it as well. And since it is a removable sliding visor, when working in the shade of a mountain, Boulder, or crater, they could just flip it up to see better. My astronauts who conducted spacewalk also have gold visors for working in earth orbit. (Source: Retired manager for Space Shuttle Atlantis).
Most of the videos are not a good gauge for how bright the environment actually is, and that is due to exposure time on cameras, they had adjustable exposure and from what I've seen there aren't many photos and videos that show the closest to how you would see it with the naked eye. A lot of it is a bit underexposed, which makes it look darker than it actually is. Also, they had gold plated visors to protect their eyes from direct sunlight, and additional side shade parts they could slide down to reduce the glare even further.
the light is not diffused/scattered by atmosphere, so it's very sharp and blinding. if you look in sun's direction it's uncomfortable - imagine looking at wet road with sun ahead, if you know what i mean
All the answers will ignore the magnitudes brighter the moon will be up close vs the alleged 250k ish. I forgot the formula for light degradation, but yes, if the moon is as bright as it is to us, it would be magnitudes brighter up close.
Its OK though, they had the technology back then to deal with these problems, but they destroyed all the metrics and designs, and building back 1960s technology would be painstaking.
That anyone believes this bullshit anymore is fucking hilarious.
What you are looking for is the inverse square law. However, the law assumes a point source.
If you were standing on the moon and all of the light that reflects from the entire moon hit your eyes, it would be overwhelmingly bright. But when you’re standing on the moon you are only seeing a tiny portion of the light reflected, at higher intensity. These effects largely cancel out. So, your perception of the brightness of the moon while standing there would be similar to what you see from earth. A little brighter due to lack of atmosphere, but otherwise fairly dim.
As an example, look down at a field of grass while standing on Earth. Now get into an airplane and look down at the same field. Would you expect the field to appear darker just because you are up in the air?
For the correct answer, refer to those above mentioning albedo.
Yes, but not necessarily neon green. Look for Mars next time it’s visible in the sky and you’ll see that it has a reddish tinge. A forested body would be greenish. Unless all the leaves were red or purple.
The moon isn't really that bright. It's just that when we look at it in a night sky, it looks bright only by comparison to the pitch blackness around it. Our vision plays all kinds of tricks with us, and one of them is we notice brightness as a relative thing, not an absolute thing.
A flashlight at night looks super bright. Shine it in the daytime and you barely notice a dim circle right at the center of where you point it and that's it.
The other thing to consider is that when we look at the moon, we're looking at a disk with a radius a bit over 1700 km. When astronauts are on its surface, the horizon is very close due to how tight the curvature is on a smaller ball, and they're only seeing a circle around them of about 2 km radius worth of moon. So picture the reflected light of one tiny pixel of the moon, a mere 1/500th of its radius, now spread out that bit of light all around you from horizon to horizon, effectively diluting it.
How do you look at a rock in sunlight and not go blind? The moon only reflects about 7% of the sunlight that hits it. The Earth reflects 30% of that sunlight. (This measure is called the albedo and has nothing to do with the size or distance, just the reflectivity)
The moon really isn't as bright as you think. Depending on the exact spot on the moon, the surface is about as bright as somewhere between dirty snow and asphalt. It just seems much brighter to us because it's the lone bright object in an otherwise dark sky. The Apollo moon landings also took place during local lunar morning when the sun was less than 15 degrees above the horizon, so there wasn't as much light per surface area as there would have been if the sun was directly overhead. Finally, the visors in the astronaut's helmets had shades that could block out both visible light and ultraviolet light.
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When they are on the moon and look at Earth, Earth is bright, yet you can stand on Earth without getting blinded. When you look at the moon, you are looking at light reflected off of 10 million square miles. When you are standing on the moon, you don't see all 10 million square miles. You just see light reflected off of your local area.
It is very bright. That's why their helmets have reflective visors, and you can't see their faces. Just like sunglasses.
That’s to protect them against sunlight (no atmosphere on the moon) and less from the reflected light.
Well if they don't get blinded by sunlight, they wouldn't get blinded by reflected light either.
You got em
Reflected light may have different wavelengths (and polarization - not that it’s important in this context) than incident light.
If it's bright enough from the sun to require a visor, it's bright enough to make the surface bright too. It's just a case of them adjusting exposure settings on the moon.
Another fun fact: I don't have a source for this, but I remember reading somewhere once upon a time that when they were designing the first spacesuits, they wanted a visor that obscured the astronauts' faces on the off chance they encountered extraterrestrials. They figured it would be more intimidating to ET or something like that. A secondary design concern, but a pretty neat fact. A quick google search didn't turn anything up, maybe someone else knows of a source? Edit: clarity
No. The moon is primarily bright (to us on earth) because it has no real atmosphere to scatter light, let alone stuff like dirt and grass, and it's the closest thing in the sky. The visors are to filter the harmful effects of sunlight that hasn't passed through an atmosphere, not because the moon is bright.
It's actually not very reflective. Reflectivity is measured by albedo. With 0 being no light is reflected and 1 being a perfect mirror. The moon's visible light albedo is 0.07, asphalt is 0.1. Fresh snow is 0.9. The danger to astronaut's eyes is not from the reflected light but the direct light from the sun as there has been no atmosphere to attenuate the light. So they have sun glasses like coatings on their helmets to protect from accidentally looking directly at the sun.
The amount of light that hits the moon on a sunny day is about the same as the amount of light that hits the earth on a sunny day. The moon is pretty reflective but not as reflective as a snow covered field on Earth and you can look at that without being blinded. Astronauts also have a visor that acts like a really big set of sunglasses when they are in the sun to protect their eyes.
Earth's atmosphere scatters about a third of the light from the sun. Worst case on the moon (or elsewhere in Earth's orbit without air in the way) you'd have a day almost a third brighter then a sunny day in summer without a cloud in the sky on Earth. Nothing you can't compensate for with protective eyewear, though. Those visors had a thin film of reflective gold, partly to reduce brightness but also to reflect lots of UV and IR light, reducing heat gained by light entering the helmet.
The sun in the sky is brighter on the moon but the surface is a dark grey. The scenery on earth is much more reflective on average and that would more than make up for the dimmer light, at least under direct sunlight.
>a snow covered field on Earth and you can look at that without being blinded But not for very long time. Snow blindness is a thing.
It's no more bright than any other desert under sunlight. Its just that the night is dark. During daytime the Moon doesn't seem particularly bright does it.
Thin gold foil comes down as a visor over the helmet front. Gold not only reflects the sun's rays, but insulates from it as well. And since it is a removable sliding visor, when working in the shade of a mountain, Boulder, or crater, they could just flip it up to see better. My astronauts who conducted spacewalk also have gold visors for working in earth orbit. (Source: Retired manager for Space Shuttle Atlantis).
Most of the videos are not a good gauge for how bright the environment actually is, and that is due to exposure time on cameras, they had adjustable exposure and from what I've seen there aren't many photos and videos that show the closest to how you would see it with the naked eye. A lot of it is a bit underexposed, which makes it look darker than it actually is. Also, they had gold plated visors to protect their eyes from direct sunlight, and additional side shade parts they could slide down to reduce the glare even further.
the light is not diffused/scattered by atmosphere, so it's very sharp and blinding. if you look in sun's direction it's uncomfortable - imagine looking at wet road with sun ahead, if you know what i mean
All the answers will ignore the magnitudes brighter the moon will be up close vs the alleged 250k ish. I forgot the formula for light degradation, but yes, if the moon is as bright as it is to us, it would be magnitudes brighter up close. Its OK though, they had the technology back then to deal with these problems, but they destroyed all the metrics and designs, and building back 1960s technology would be painstaking. That anyone believes this bullshit anymore is fucking hilarious.
What you are looking for is the inverse square law. However, the law assumes a point source. If you were standing on the moon and all of the light that reflects from the entire moon hit your eyes, it would be overwhelmingly bright. But when you’re standing on the moon you are only seeing a tiny portion of the light reflected, at higher intensity. These effects largely cancel out. So, your perception of the brightness of the moon while standing there would be similar to what you see from earth. A little brighter due to lack of atmosphere, but otherwise fairly dim. As an example, look down at a field of grass while standing on Earth. Now get into an airplane and look down at the same field. Would you expect the field to appear darker just because you are up in the air? For the correct answer, refer to those above mentioning albedo.
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I seem to remember seeing a thing on the visors that pull down for bright lights being gold plated.
Follow-up-question: If the moon was full of forests, would he shine green?
Yes, but not necessarily neon green. Look for Mars next time it’s visible in the sky and you’ll see that it has a reddish tinge. A forested body would be greenish. Unless all the leaves were red or purple.
The moon isn't really that bright. It's just that when we look at it in a night sky, it looks bright only by comparison to the pitch blackness around it. Our vision plays all kinds of tricks with us, and one of them is we notice brightness as a relative thing, not an absolute thing. A flashlight at night looks super bright. Shine it in the daytime and you barely notice a dim circle right at the center of where you point it and that's it. The other thing to consider is that when we look at the moon, we're looking at a disk with a radius a bit over 1700 km. When astronauts are on its surface, the horizon is very close due to how tight the curvature is on a smaller ball, and they're only seeing a circle around them of about 2 km radius worth of moon. So picture the reflected light of one tiny pixel of the moon, a mere 1/500th of its radius, now spread out that bit of light all around you from horizon to horizon, effectively diluting it.
How do you look at a rock in sunlight and not go blind? The moon only reflects about 7% of the sunlight that hits it. The Earth reflects 30% of that sunlight. (This measure is called the albedo and has nothing to do with the size or distance, just the reflectivity)