There is no mystery at all as to why the Moon shines. The Moon is a satellite of the Earth. That means it is a small body that revolves around it, just as the Earth evolves around the sun.
The only reason we can see the Moon from Earth, or that it appears to ‘shine‘, is because light from the Sun strikes its surface and is reflected to us. Strangely enough we can only see one side of the Moon from the Earth. This is because the
Moon rotates on its axis in the same length of time it takes for it to make its journey around the Earth.
Since the Moon has no atmosphere, or air, the light from the Sun causes rather interesting effects. For about fourteen days, the surface of the Moon is heated by the direct rays of the Sun to a temperature above that of boiling water. The other
half of the lunar month, it is exposed to the cold of a long, dark night.
Eclipses happen for a brief period when the Moon, Earth and Sun are in line. A lunar eclipse happens when the Earth lies between the Moon and the Sun, blocking off the light to the Moon, so that the Moon seems to vanish.
