Bright moons

[Baron Opal II]

Light comes from the sun and is reflected by the moon. Thus we can see both as they follow their courses.

How could we have visible, even bright, moons without a sun? Magic is allowed, but only as a facilitator and not foundationally. We can't just magic the moon to be bright.

The sun is a black hole, and the moon(s) transmute the emitted radiation to visible wavelengths? A bit out there, but that's the best I could come up with.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Two ideas:

1) The moon is hot! It is a ball of heated material that radiates light.

2) The moon is a big phosphorescent mushroom in space. It glows and spreads spores.

 

[J.Quondam]

lit up by cities or fires.
houses a portal to the plane of fire, "the plane of light", or something.
covered with fields/lakes of bioluminescent plants or other organisms
highly radioactive, geologically active (volcanoes), or otherwise literally hot
is a "lens" that somehow concentrates/magnifies starlight that falls on it

 

[Umbran]

The sun is a black hole, and the moon(s) transmute the emitted radiation to visible wavelengths? A bit out there, but that's the best I could come up with.

Black holes, in and of themselves, do not emit much radiation. That's why they are black.

If you have matter falling into the black hole, that will heat up as it falls in,a nd glow, and that can give you a light source.

But that also means that your planet is in the accretion disk of a black hole, which doesn't seem like a wise place to be.

But, ways to have the moon be bright:
The thing is still molten, and glows with its internal heat.
The moon has a really, really intense magnetic field, and it glows in the light of its own aurora.
The moon is largely covered by an ocean filled with bio-luminescent algae/plankton.

 

[Mercurius]

Is it a (scientific) planet or (fantastical) "world?" Meaning, is it a planet that, except for magic, follows the current known laws of physics? Or is it a world that need not follow any laws of physics?

Assuming the latter, you could go with any number of fantastical, mythic explanations. Tolkien's sun and moon were fruits from the Two Trees. The moon could be the egg of some kind of cosmic dragon, or maybe it is an artificial construct within which the gods live, etc.

The point being, you don't need to offer a scientific explanation unless it is a scientific world, and even then we don't know everything and a lot of astro-physics is speculative.

 

[loverdrive]

The "moon" is a hole in the sky through which a glimpse of another world is visible.

 

[Tonguez]

Light comes from the sun and is reflected by the moon. Thus we can see both as they follow their courses.

How could we have visible, even bright, moons without a sun? Magic is allowed, but only as a facilitator and not foundationally. We can't just magic the moon to be bright.

The sun is a black hole, and the moon(s) transmute the emitted radiation to visible wavelengths? A bit out there, but that's the best I could come up with.

Studies suggest that the ice of Jupiters moon Europa glows faintly due to bombardment from Jupiters intense radiation field. SO a moon with just the right type of ice and an intense radiation source (maybe its own rotating core) might do it.

Also on Jupiter's moons Io is the most volcanically active moon in the solar system and thus emits a strong infrared glow (but human eyes cant see it, but who says your characters all have human vision?)

A Comet newly caught in a planets orbit will keep discharging its coma for a while but quickly (ie a few thousand years?) burnout and become a rock. Of course a planet being able to capture a comet in its orbit without either flinging the comet off or destructively colliding is another story .(magic?)

Another option is that the moon is covered in a bioluminescent covering (an algae slime?, plant cover?) - I did a game set on Calisto (yes Jupiter) in which the subsurface sea was brimming with a pink algae which the first settlers named Amaranth and which they harvested and processed into food

 

[Umbran]

A Comet newly caught in a planets orbit will keep discharging its coma for a while but quickly (ie a few thousand years?) burnout and become a rock. Of course a planet being able to capture a comet in its orbit without either flinging the comet off or destructively colliding is another story .(magic?)

Comets don't glow on their own, though - that's light from the star reflecting off ice crystals in cloud of gasses around the tail.

 

[Oryzarius]

How could we have visible, even bright, moons without a sun? Magic is allowed, but only as a facilitator and not foundationally. We can't just magic the moon to be bright.

How do your fantasy farmers grow crops without a sun? Do you basically just have a surface Underdark, where fantastic mushrooms make up the basis of every diet?

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

But that also means that your planet is in the accretion disk of a black hole, which doesn't seem like a wise place to be.

Incandescent, Greg Egan.