Stars are millions of light years away, by the time the light source reaches Earth, they've been scattered far apart. Chances are the 'star' you see at night are not the main bodies of the star, but the intense glare from the light emitted from it, that's how strong starlight/sunlight actually are.

Natural visible light scatter the further it is from the source unless you focus and amplifies it like in a laser, and even laser isn't immune to scattering by atomic imperfection of vacuum/space.

By the time sunlight bounces off the moon and hitting earth, it's scattered so much that it's barely illuminating the night and it's not heating up the atmosphere anymore, or rather, the heat is dissipated by our atmosphere faster than moonlight can heat it up.

This post has been edited by SeaGates: Jan 21 2011, 02:09 PM

Glare is a whole different thing already. Like most people point out earlier the Albedo number of the moon surface is very low, so the light reflected is not enough to produce glare that you commonly see from bright light source or the sun, but at the same time the reflected light is bright enough to partially illuminate Earth. The moon does get brighter the closer you are to it, as experienced by Astronauts on Apollo missions. Picture and video of moon landing you see in general media has been edited to give it a better constrast.

Let's do a thought mathematics, assuming from the sun is 100%, by the time it hits the moon, maybe 10% is left, add in the Albedo factor, maybe 1% get reflected, and that 1% get scattered and by the time it reaches the earth, passing through the atmosphere which further scatter the light, only a tiny fraction of what the sun emitted is left.

Try this if you still have doubt

Items needed :

- 1 slightly dull metallic surface (the moon)
- 1 laser pointer (the sun)
- Your pair of eyes (the earth), or a wall.

Shine the laser on the reflecting surface, and you can still see the red dot on the surface(albeit duller), the visible dot is actually reflected light off the reflector going into your eyes. If you bring the reflecting object close enough to the wall, you can see a feint red dot on the wall(the moonlight).

You can replace the dull reflector with a mirror, to simulate the difference between a high and low Albedo number. Remember the surface of the moon has a low Albedo number.

This post has been edited by SeaGates: Jan 21 2011, 02:57 PM