Question: I know the moon gets its colour from the reflection from the sun but why then does the moon appear different colours such as grey, pale yellow, orange and red?

Ed Rial answered on 12 Mar 2015:

Hi Ella

These colours arise from impurities in the Earth’s atmosphere, so the light reflected from the moon gets filtered before it reaches your eyes.

In the summer you often get something called a Harvest Moon which can go from pale yellow to very red, especially out in the countryside when they are harvesting lots of crops. The dust from the harvest goes into the sky and absorbs the blue light reflected from the moon, leaving the red light to pass through making the moon look anything from yellow to reddish.

On very dark nights in the countryside, when there is a new moon or a very slight crescent moon you can sometimes still see the full moon due to light reflected from the Earth onto the moon, and then back again. It looks very ghostly!

Ed