The planets of the Solar System have no light of their own  They are lit with the golden light of the sun  A small percentage of this borrowed sunshine is reflected back again out into apace  It is this reflected glory which shows us the shining faces of our sister planets  The earth, like its sisters, is also lit with sunshine and it too reflects a little of this light back into space 

The first astronauts to land on the moon will watch the brightness of day and shadows of night chase each other around and around our globe  The first visitors to Mars will see the earth go through changing phases, dust as we see the changing phases of the face of the moon and the planet Venus.