Colors of the Moon
Model: gpt-4.1-mini
Prompt version: 1.0
What color is the Moon? It depends on the night.
Outside of the Earth’s Atmosphere, the dark Moon, which shines by reflected sunlight, appears a magnificently brown-tinged gray.
Viewed from inside the Earth’s atmosphere, though, the Moon can appear quite different. The featured image highlights a collection of apparent colors of the full moon documented by one astrophotographer over 10 years from different locations across Italy.
A red or yellow colored Moon usually indicates a moon seen near the horizon. There, some of the blue light has been scattered away by a long path through the Earth’s atmosphere, sometimes laden with fine dust.
A blue-colored Moon is more rare and can indicate a moon seen through an atmosphere carrying larger dust particles.
What created the purple moon is unclear — it may be a combination of several effects.
The last image captures the total lunar eclipse of 2018 July — where the Moon, in Earth’s shadow, appeared a faint red — due to light refracted through air around the Earth.
The next full moon will occur at the end of this month (moon-th) and is known in some cultures as the Beaver Moon.