Most of us, according to the U.N., live in cites rather than rural regions. The switchover was slow in coming, but they pin the exact turnaround year as 2007. This urbanization has created countless consequences from reduction in family size to radical shifts in employment categories.
But let’s not neglect the night’s brightest illumination — the Moon. If our grandparents farmed, their ability or inability to see clearly wasn’t a minor thing. We now know that the Moon’s brightness reliably doubles 2 1/2 days before Full Moon, which is a big deal if you need a little extra light to complete your days’ tasks. After all, a Half Moon is only 1/10th as bright as a Full Moon, not enough to be safely useful.
Let’s have some fun with this and fill in the Moonlight thing with cool stuff you never knew. But first we’ll start with the obvious, which is Moonlight’s vastly different importance to urbanites compared with country dwellers. Tall buildings block the Moon, of course, and additionally, cities have streetlights that, for over a century, have rendered moonlight superfluous. Urbanites no longer need it.
Where seasonality comes in is that now in December and January nature provides the year’s most overhead Full Moons. It’s never seen straight up from any part of Canada or Europe or any state except Hawaii, but when it’s high it’s brighter and far less likely to be blocked. Bottom line: We are now in Moonlight Season!
There are surprises too. The biggest may be that the Moon only SEEMS bright. It actually has the same reflectivity or brilliance as an asphalt parking lot. Its dull surface only reflects 7% of the sunlight striking it. Using real numbers, the Full Moon is 465,000 times less bright than the Sun. Thus, surprisingly, if some crazed developer decided to follow Joni Mitchell’s advice and “pave paradise and put up a parking lot” the paved-over Moon would look no darker than it already does!
It looks bright at night only because the black sky background forces our retinas to display it as having whiteness, since our eyesight operates in terms of contrasts. But a few years ago, when the U.S. climate Orbiter satellite photographed it next to the Earth, we saw, for the first time, that it indeed appeared dull when compared with all earthly objects ranging from bright clouds to dark oceans. Go ahead — check out its true brightness using the accurate A / B comparison offered on this page.
Few objects are darker than the Moon. No planet’s surface is as dingy. The Moon’s 7% reflectivity even means it’s darker than green-black jungle foliage (which has an average 15% reflectivity) and it›s only slightly less inky than coal or black paint (each with 5% reflectivity).
Sorry to throw cold water on the romantic Moonlight Sonata.
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