By the light of the silvery Moon: fact and fiction

Abstract

Is moonlight 'silver' or 'cold'? In this paper we discuss the interesting combination of factors that contribute to the common descriptions of moonlight. Sunlight is reflected from the lunar surface and red-shifted. When traversing the atmosphere, moonlight is further depleted of short wavelength content by Rayleigh scattering. We measured the spectra of the moonlight to show these effects and compared them with sunlight. All measurements, including spectral reflectance, suggest that moonlight is redder than sunlight. The silvery Moon is just an illusion due to the properties and behaviour of our own eyes, including the responses of rods and cones and the physiological perceptive phenomenon called Purkinje shift.