If the moon is visible due to the sun's reflection on it, why does the moon not look orange-yellow like the sun instead of a white or grey colour?

Arpeggionist

Because, first of all, the sun's light is white. But second of all, the Moon is not a giant mirror in the cosmos, but rather a big white and gray rock. Just as the Earth from the Moon looks like a big ball with blue oceans and brown continents and white clouds, what we see on the Moon is surface features, white and grey rocks with darker spots around its craters. Jan 21 08, 4:29 PM

skypilot024

If you want to see a more colourful Moon, check it out when it's close to the horizon. As it rises, all the garbage in the atmosphere makes it appear to change from orange to yellow to blue to gray and then to white. Jan 21 08, 4:54 PM

themonarch

There have been occasions when the moon has a more orange/yellow color to it to the visible eye. This effect is caused by the atmosphere of the earth. The reason for the orange color is due to the scattering of light by the atmosphere. When the moon is near the horizon, the moonlight must pass through much more atmosphere than when the moon is directly overhead. By the time the moonlight reaches your eyes, the blue, green, and purple pieces of visible light have been scattered away by air molecules. That's why you only see yellow, orange, or red. The moon can have an orange color at any time of the year. Sometimes the moon appears orange even when it's directly overhead. This occurs when there's a lot of dust, smoke, or pollution in the atmosphere. The size of those particles will determine the type of color you will see. Here's a picture of what it looks like. http://home.hiwaay.net/~krcool/Astro/moon/moonorange/ Jan 21 08, 5:08 PM

MonkeyOnALeash

EVERYTHING you see is due to the reflection of a light source just as the moon reflects the Suns light source. Different objects reflect/absorb certain parts of the visible spectrum that the source generates. This is why a Womans makeup looks different in the Bathroom mirror than in the car mirror. Jan 21 08, 6:40 PM

star_gazer

Visibly blue moon The most obvious meaning of blue moon is when the moon (not necessarily a full moon) appears to a casual observer to be unusually bluish, which is a rare event. The effect can be caused by smoke or dust particles in the atmosphere, as has happened after forest fires in Sweden and Canada in 1950 and, notably, after the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883, which caused the moon to appear blue for nearly two years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_moon Jan 21 08, 9:14 PM