Eli5 why does the night sky sometime look pitch black while some time it looks like its daytime just dimmed ?
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Cloud cover. If you live in a rural area, then cloud cover might obscure the moon and make the night darker. If you live in an urban area (by contrast), low cloud cover can reflect city lights and make the nights brighter.
The phase of the moon. The moon reflects the sun’s light. In a full moon, more light is reflected and vice versa.
These would be the two biggest factors, I’d guess.
Depends on how the sun is hitting the atmosphere pretty much. Light can come in from the side and scatter along the atmosphere making it less dark. Also light reflected off the moon can help a lot.
Dust or other fine material in the air can act as a bit of a lampshade, and sunlight that might normally continue on past the Earth gets redirected in all kinds of directions, some of it coming down to the surface where our eyes are. It’s basically the same effect as a hazy day, but at night.
Weather, sun angle, ice crystals, and perhaps some other variables can affect night sky as well.
There is also light pollution to consider. If you stop in a park in the middle of a city, you might not have a light immediately near you but if you look up in the sky you can often make out a light hazy look. As with high dust clouds or ash that reflect sunlight, ground-level pollutants like tailpipe emissions or a factory’s smokestack will have the same lampshade effect. Even a sufficiently humid night can produce this, as water vapor can reflect enough light to create the sense of haze that you see.
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