Moonlit night is the time of day on the Moon , characterized by the complete absence of direct sunlight. It occurs once a synodic month at every point on its surface, with the exception of the polar regions.
Duration - half of the synodic month , i.e. about 354 earth hours (14 days and 18 hours).
At the same time, on the territory of the side of the Moon close to the Earth, the terrain is continuously illuminated by the reflected light of the Earth (about 15 times brighter than the moonlight of the Earth’s night [1] ), for the reverse side, the sky is illuminated only by stars . In territories close to the edge of the lunar disk, due to libration , the Earth can appear at the horizon and disappear behind it.
Due to the lack of an atmosphere on the moon, which damps diurnal temperature fluctuations, and because of its long duration, the moonlit night is much colder than the earth: the upper layer of the lunar soil freezes at night to −170 ° C [2] .
In Culture
- Moonlit night (radio play) (Stanislav Lem)
Notes
- ↑
- “Soviet robots in the solar system: technologies and discoveries” ( M. Ya. Marov , U. T. Huntress), p. 263 // M., “Fizmatlit”, 2017.“Photometric measurements ( Lunokhod-2 ”) led to somewhat unexpected results regarding the brightness of the moon sky. In particular, it was shown that in the daytime the lunar sky is contaminated with a certain amount of dust, and that with the light of the Earth at night, the lunar sky is 15 times brighter than the sky on Earth with a full moon ”
- ↑ V. G. Surdin , “Travels to the Moon”, p. 15 // M., “Fizmatlit”, 2015.
See also
- Night