system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Since the moon we see reflects the sun’s light, does that mean the earth also reflects the suns light and from space it looks as bright as the moon?
gpt
Brighter.

The amount of sunlight reflected by a celestial body depends on a large range of parameters, but primarily on the composition of the object. Some materials are more reflective than others. And since many planets and moons aren't homogeneous, some areas will be brighter than others. In the case of the Earth, oceans are darker than vegetation covered land, which in turn is darker than a sandy desert. And snow and ice are more reflective than any of those.

A quantity that is used to denote the diffuse reflectiveness of an object is its "albedo", which is a dimensionless number that ranges from 0 (no reflection at all, perfectly black) to 1 (full reflection of all incident light). The Moon has an average albedo of 0.136, while the Earth sits at an average albedo of 0.3.