How Can the Moon and Sun be in the Same Sky?

Q.

Why can we see the Moon and the Sun in the same sky?

A.

Mankind has always associated the Moon with the night; it has forever been the fabled opposite of the day star, our Sun. However an astute observer such as our reader who asked the question “how can the Moon and Sun be in the same sky” will notice that at times the Moon invades the daytime realm, seeming to fly in the face of its “role.” How is this possible?

First, a complete understanding of what, exactly, makes “day” and “night” for us here on Earth is in order. The Sun, combined with the Earth’s rotation, is what creates “day.” When the side of the planet you live on faces the Sun and is lit by that star, it is day. When the Earth has spun away from the Sun and darkness falls upon you, it is “night.”

The Moon, despite some mythological posturing, has nothing to do with creating night, and thus is not locked into a relatively arbitrary time frame. The Moon is on its own schedule, one that involves orbiting the Earth, not the Sun. Thus, at times, the Moon is over your head during the time your half of the Earth is facing the Sun – so you will see both the Sun and the Moon in the same sky, at the same time.

The relationship of all three heavenly bodies (Earth, Moon and Sun) provide quite a bit of drama, and the most fantastic circumstance of them all, a solar eclipse, precisely because of how they share the same “sky”. Sky, of course, is what we call what we see over our heads, but in fact the, Earth, Moon and Sun are in infinite space, where there is plenty of room for them all to perform their own celestial dances.

The fact we can see the Moon at night is due to reflected sunlight hitting the lunar surface from behind the Earth. When, once a month, the Moon is between that light and the Earth at night, it is called a New Moon – and is invisible to the naked eye. When this happens during the day, and on the rare occasion that the Moon perfectly covers the light of the Sun, it is a solar eclipse, and quite a sight to see.

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