The color of the Moon as viewed more closely, is grey. But when we see it in the sky it appears white to us. Why?
Although this question has some answers here: Why is the surface of the Moon white? (which is not asking the same question, but is rather asking “what materials give the Moon its white color, as you can see that it’s tagged “Material Science”), none of the answers really concern “why does it appear white during the day”.
One answer briefly mentions the daytime scenario:
When you see the moon "by itself", brighter than anything else in the night sky (or brighter than the blue sky in the day) our brain says "that's white".
But that doesn’t quite answer the question. Because although it’s true that the Moon is brighter than the daytime sky, the difference is way too small to make the grey moon appear white. Here is an image of the Moon with a black background and with a (near) sky blue background:
Although it may be debatable whether the Moon looks white in the upper picture, I don’t thing it’s valid for the lower picture.
And why does the Moon look white even when compared to surrounding clouds?
Edit:
I came up with an answer, but I'm afraid to post it as an answer until I have some people agreeing with me.
It's probably for the same reason we don't see the dark side of the moon neither at day nor at night. For some reason, we can't see darkness of outer space (at least not at daytime), but only brightness. So only the white part of the grey reaches our eyes, while the black part of it doesn't. Probably that reason is that our sky color is already taking in account the background blackness of outer space which is present behind the entire sky.
I would really appreciate if you can share your knowledge or opinion on that answer.
