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The moon is brighter than the sun if you measure it in gamma rays. Sorta.
NASA published this interesting article in a press release issued last week, while it was encouraging research by physicists Mario Nicola Mazziotta and Francesco Loparco at the National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Italy, who made observations using the Fermi Gamma Space Telescope.
Electromagnetic radiation, what we call light, moves like a wave. The waves have a characteristic wavelength (the distance between their peaks) and an amplitude (the intensity). The energy of light is proportional to its wavelength, the shortest wavelengths corresponding to higher energy. Our eyes only perceive a small part of the possible light, what we call visible light. Thus, to our eyes, the Moon looks like a white circle because it reflects the much brighter sun's visible light.
But the Moon is not limited to what there is literally to watch. The high-energy particles produced in the universe from exploded stars or black holes located in the center of the galaxies fill the gap. Although they are generally blocked by magnetic fields, the Moon does not have magnetic fields. The particles strike the lunar surface, interact with its material and produce gamma rays. These gamma rays are visible through special detectors, such as the Fermi telescope. As cosmic rays hit the moon from all directions, the gamma-rayed moon shows no phase, like the crescents we see in visible light. According to the NASA version, brightness varies with cyclical changes in the Sun's magnetic field.
NASA points out that the Moon only surpasses the Sun by gamma rays at lower energies, where the Sun's magnetic field blocks cosmic rays. More energetic particles always penetrate the Sun's magnetic field, interact with the sun's atoms, and produce gamma rays. NASA also mentions that it's important to understand the lunar gamma-ray environment as we strive once again to send the astronauts back to the moon.
The image below shows Fermi's view of the moon becoming brighter as she collects more gamma rays.
So, the next time you go to kindergarten and your teacher will tell you that the moon does not shine on its own, you can tell your teacher.
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