It has to in order to keep one face aimed in our direction. A lot of people incorrectly believe the moon doesn’t rotate, but the moon does spin on its axis, too, just as Earth does. Twenty-four hours is the length of an earthly day. Here on Earth, our planet’s spin on its axis carries us from daylight to darkness and back again every 24 hours. From the moon, the sky always looks black, even during the lunar day when the sun is shining in the moon’s sky.

The moment after the sun set would be as dark as midnight, with no lingering color at all.Įarth’s atmosphere also makes our sky look blue in the daytime. And, because there’s no atmosphere on the moon, sunset on the moon would be equally abrupt. Plus, if you were watching a sunrise on the moon, you would see stars rise in the sun’s vicinity and cross the sky with the sun throughout the lunar day. The moon doesn’t have an atmosphere, so there are no twilight colors.

On Earth, when you watch a sunrise or sunset, you can see colored light in the sky, scattered by our planet’s atmosphere. The video below, from the Kurdistan Planetarium in the U.K., shows the sun rising as seen from the moon’s surface and setting two weeks later.Īs the video shows, sunrise on the moon comes suddenly.

Image of the sun rising