Fun Facts about Our Moon
Have you ever noticed the ways the moon changes? The moon can be bright or dull. Sometimes, we don’t see the moon in the sky at all! Other times, the moon shows up even when the sun is out.
When the moon looks bright, it’s partly because of the sun. The moon has no light of its own. It only reflects the sun’s light. But how?
Think about daytime. The sun makes everything around you bright with light. During daytime, sunlight hits Earth’s surface and makes it bright. During nighttime, the sun is near another part of Earth’s surface, making that part bright, so you see darkness. At night, you also see the moon.
In the same way that sunlight shines on Earth’s surface and makes it bright, sunlight shines on the moon’s surface and makes that bright. Even though you can’t see the sun at night, sunlight reaches the moon’s surface. The sun acts like a giant flashlight in the sky that’s pointed at the moon.
Other things can make the moon look brighter or duller, too. Sometimes, the moon looks brighter because it’s closer to Earth. Fog and clouds in the sky can make the moon look dimmer.
The moon is always in the sky, but we don’t usually see it during daytime. One reason for this is that the sun is so powerful that it makes the sky very bright. The brightness makes the moon hard to see. Imagine turning on a flashlight in a darkroom and aiming it at a wall. You would see the flashlight’s bright light clearly. Now, imagine turning on a flashlight in a room that already has all the lights on. You would hardly see the light from the flashlight because the other lights are more powerful. The moon becomes difficult to see in daytime for the same reason.
The next time you see the big, bright moon in the sky, think of the sun shining its light onto it.
【小题1】The word “reflects” in paragraph 2 probably means _______.| A．sends back | B．picks up | C．carries on |
| A．The moon cannot be seen in daytime. |
| B．The moon shines bright from the sun. |
| C．You can see the flashlight’s light in a bright room clearly. |
| A．The sunlight can shine on both the Earth’s surface and the moon’s surface. |
| B．The fog and clouds in the sky can make the moon brighter. |
| C．The moon becomes difficult to see in daytime because it’s closer to Earth. |
| A．To state reasons that make the sun look bright or dull. |
| B．To tell how darkness makes the moon look bright in the sky. |
| C．To explain reasons that make the moon look different sometimes. |
