Hey Luna! I have good news!

[Hippo]

So I was thinking about something:

Apparently, whatever planet Equestria is on, the moon should always be at a full state if it is opposite the sun. But the moon isn't always at a full state. This means that the Equestrian moon, much like our moon, has different phases throughout the weeks because of it's proximity to the earth and sun.

This means that Luna doesn't always appear when the sun sets. For a pretty large portion of the moon phases, the moon can be shown in the sky during the daytime. So, Luna wouldn't have to be so lonely.

But as the show indicates, the moon seems to show only at night. This means that the moon orbits the earth in the same time that the earth orbits the sun, right? I'm not astronomer, but I think it would be impossible. I believe planet satellites have to orbit their planet at a certain rate in order to not succumb to the gravity of the sun, pulling it closer to the center of the solar system.

Of course, since the magic of the alicorns is what makes these things happen anyway, you wonder why they couldn't fudge the numbers to have it make sense. Is Trollestia tricking her sister into thinking that the moon can only show during the day? Probably.

[Doc Hoof MD]

I can understand Luna controlling the moon and all but what about Celestia controlling the sun? Does the planet even rotate? Do they just control the planets rotation? What happens to the sun when Nightmare moon brings eternal darkness? Does half of the plant burn? I am just going to go with the most reasonable answer which is magic.

[Kirby Krackle]

See all this right here? See all this? I now want to make Copernicus Pony for the RP. It's your fault.

[Ginger Mint]

hi hi

There's a number of ways you could make this work I think... It could be that the moon is actually a super massive terrestrial body that is located more distant from Equestria than our moon is from Earth. If that was the case, you could essentially say that Equestria is actually the moon's moon and so whenever they go behind the moon, the sun would be totally eclipsed. (and why the moon looks like a crescent just after sundown or before sunrise)

Or in this scenario, Equestria could be located at L1 (or perhaps even L4 or L5) between the sun and the moon, thus requiring daily magic to keep it from drifting out of place as well as manual rotation to keep it from processing one surface with the sun the whole time. I think this is the most likely scenario, because it is the only way I can think of to explain why the sun and the moon need to be on opposite sides of the planet, otherwise it would go spiraling off into space.

Another possibility is that Equestria is in a binary star system and is located near the barycenter of the two, so in order to have night time at all, one of the stars needs to be blocked out by a volumetrically larger moon. (and that would explain why the dark side of the moon isn't very dark.

If Nightmare moon did bring eternal night, one side would get stuck in a permanent winter, with temperatures kind of like being in antarctica during the winter, the other side would get stuck in a permanent sahara desert in the afternoon. But around the terminator you'd be able to have reasonable temperatures. With pegasi controlling the weather, you might be able to equalize the temperatures to some degree using cloud cover, precipitation and air currents.

[Skye]

This is actually something that I really have no answer for!

[Skye]

This is being moved to Brony Chatter as it doesn't actually seem to have to do with Lore.

There's no evidence that Luna is not capable of being present during the day as the night. Indeed in S01E02, she is shown in full daylight with her sister.