So the answer to the question "Why do the planets and moon glow?" Is "because they reflect light."
Well, yeah. But why do they reflect light?
The answer, which I should have considered, is that everything reflects light. Light hits something, bounces off, thus we have colors and vision.
Light will reflect off anything in the universe that isn't pure black, which is a rarity.
But I'm still puzzled over the glow factor. I understand that all objects reflect light. But being able to see that glow, from 250,ooo miles away (such as the moon) and much further for the planets, still baffles me.
It's a difficult concept for me.
To be continued on HF - I think there is some esoteric relative truth here that I've missed, and more specifically a personal truth - a sort of universal law, I'm thinkin'.
Ha! Our families must be on the same wave-length lately. We spent HOURS having a trivia question/discussion about the solar system the other night.
ReplyDeleteLotsa fun! Answers just lead to more questions, and off we go.
... isn't the glow because of our atmosphere distorting the returning light? Like why the stars twinkle when in reality they're steady?
ReplyDelete