What would the sky look like from the Moon?

Think of a sunny day when you look up at the sky. Feel the warm sunshine on your cheeks. Above you, the sky is bright and blue.

Now imagine you are standing on the Moon, on soft grey dust. You tip your head back and look up. What would the sky look like from the Moon?

Air wraps all around our Earth, like a soft blanket. The air is made of tiny bits, much too small to see. Sunlight shines down through all that air.

Sunlight bumps into those tiny bits of air. Then it starts to scatter, which means bouncing all around the sky. The scattered light fills our whole sky with blue.

The Moon is different. The Moon has no air at all, not even one little puff. When the Sun shines there, what color do you think the sky will be?

The sky is black, like the darkest night! With no air, nothing makes the sunlight scatter. No blue light bounces around, and the sky stays black even in the daytime.

The black sky has no blue light to hide the stars. So stars shine up there even in the daytime. On Earth, the scattered blue light hides them from us.

The sunny ground is so bright that it makes you squint. That bright glow makes the stars hard for your eyes to see. Step into the shadow of a big rock, and there they are.

From the side of the Moon that faces us, you can see our Earth too. It hangs in the black sky like a big blue and white marble. Earth glows because the Sun shines on it, the way the Sun lights up the Moon for us.

The Moon has no air, so sunlight cannot scatter, and the sky looks black. Stars shine in that black sky, even in the daytime.

Grey dust lies still under the bright Sun. Above it, the black sky stretches far and wide. The stars shine steady, and our blue Earth glows among them.