Have you ever experienced a full moon night? Have you ever played outside in a strange silver light that is almost as bright as day?
Have you ever been outside on a moonless night, and beheld, for the first time, the light of the stars?

I have experienced the light of the moon. Never the light of the stars. Have you?
Share. We need the information on what it's like, because in fantasy stories you often have people traveling at night.

Another question: What is visibility like as the sun sinks behind the horizon? What can you see in the strange light of deep dusk?

Where I live, you can see the sun setting on a pond behind my house and you can see it rise behind a forest, in the front of my house. So I have seen a lot of sunsets and rises. 'Tis always amazing to me, the beauty of them.

As far as describing them goes...each one is different, depends on how cloudy it is, how many forest fires we've had, the direction of the wind. Basically, everyday there is a different sunset. (Sunrises are the same...but they are too early for me to wake up and study them each day). The visibility of them is...umm...well, also hard to describe. It's sort of like if you took a red, dimmed lightbulb and put it in a small room, that'd be about the visibility. Sometimes the sunset can make things appear different colors too, but it has to be a specific kind of sunset. I'm not sure what effects that.

The moon is the same as the sun as far as diversity goes. I have this little window above my actual window that allows me to see the moon every night. Some nights it's dim and some nights it's bright...it all depends really.

Cool...At my house we don't have a good view of either one.

What I really meant was, what is the light like after the sun is down? The twilight.
One summer, my family went to a nice camp way out in the Ozarks. Out there there was little internet, no cell phone service, and no city lights. As we stepped out of the chapel one evening, at first it looked pitch-black against the electric lights. But, as we walked away down the trail to our cabin, I realized it was not all the way dark yet. The sun was gone, but the sky was a dusky shade of blue, with a few stars just barely beginning to poke through. The moon had not yet risen. And, when we got away from artificial light, I could see! Yes, things looked dim, indistinct and strange in the deep twilight, but we had no need to pull out our flashlights.

I've discovered that even a half-moon is plenty bright enough to see by. And the higher the moon is, the brighter it gets.

(Once I read that it is impossible to read by moonlight, no matter how bright it is. But I've never tested this.)

Hmm...well, I've never tried reading by the moonlight, but no it isn't possible. It's not possible to write by the moonlight, I'd imagine reading isn't much different.

Basically, if you're in the forest near our house...it's going to be....practically pitch black once the sun goes down, but if you are in our backyard, near the pond, you'll see just enough to get around but not enough to see details...like I said, it's really hard to describe.

Right...If you're out in the open at deep dusk, you can see; vaguely. But under trees and stuff, in the "shade", it's very dark.

(Slightly off topic, but don't you love the way, at sunrise or sunset, the light is that orangey gold color?)

I enjoy nighttime, if I'm feeling awake, then.

Twilight: It is probably the hardest to think you are seeing at twilight, because the colors are turning grey, but they are still almost there. You are kind of halfway in between daytime and nighttime vision. and everything tries to blur together into one big gray.

Moonlight: Very bright, really, once you are used to it. Depending on the thickness of tree cover, traveling in the woods can be done, though the black spots look even blacker next to the light spots.

Starlight: On a clear night, starlight is actually decent for traveling over open ground. In the woods, however, you would not do well unless you knew the ground, because most of the time not enough light penetrates to see much more than holes in the foliage above you.

Clouds: Cloud cover with a moon is brighter than starlight. It is like having a soft blanket that diffuses light thrown over the moon. (Unless it is really really thick storm clouds...) Cloud cover without the moon makes for the darkest of nights, especially with storm clouds.

Cool, thanks!
I'm curious: I have never seen starlight before. What conditions must be present in order to see it?

No moon! It is really hard to see stars when there's a moon... particularly if it's full. I find that clear, moonless nights are the best for stars... and then they seem to be white pinpricks of light...

(From a book )

I love it when there's clouds across a clear sky... they seem so thick and grey against the black.

As for dusk... where I live, after the sun's down everything turns different shades of soft thick grey, slightly toned with their original colours. It's often a quiet, alert time of day... it's when I am most aware of things because everything is slowly winding down for the night. Besides that, I just love dusk/night. Probably because I can write best then. And I love how the air feels... kind of close, warm but cool-ish in the summer, fresh and vibrant in winter.

Aren't the different kinds of full moons amazing? The last I saw was a thick creamy, glowing colour. And I've seen one that was so orange it almost looked like one of those round street lamps. And then there are the moons that are pure silver with glowing silver rings about them in the blue sky....

My thanks. *shy blush*



That is obvious, now that I think about it, but I hadn't realized it before. I've never seen moonlight reflected off snow. *wistfully*

I live at the bottom of Australia in a place called the Latrobe Valley where it never snows. Well, actually it snowed once about five or six years ago. But there was no moon over the few days the snow lasted. *sighs* I do remember how large and feathery the snowflakes looked when I looked straight up at the clouds. It was really cool.

Not only should there be little/no moon, but no other lights either. We live seven miles from the nearest town. From out here in the country, you can see glow in the sky over the towns. Needless to say, you can't see the stars from inside the glow.

Also, if you had a campfire, it would be hard to see the stars unless you stepped away into the dark.

It's hard for me to tell. Too much light pollution. But in the Cypress hills, or up at camp, I noticed that it's not that hard to see shapes, at least at night. Not features, necessarily, but you can tell that it's a person and not a tree, and sometimes who it is, depending on the light. I love the stars in the hills. You can see way more than you can at home.