The Surah begins with a highly aesthetic, symmetrical series of cosmic oaths, swearing first by the sun and then by the moon:
Surah 91:1-2:
By the sun and its brightness, and the moon when it follows it (talāhā).
The Visual Illusion: The verb talā explicitly means to follow behind, chase, or come directly after an entity. To a historical critic or secular astronomer, this specific phrasing describes pure visual phenomenology—the subjective appearance of the sky from the perspective of an observer standing on a flat, stationary earth. To an observer in the 7th-century Hijaz, the sun appears to move across the sky vault, and as it sets, the moon regularly emerges or rises in the east, visually appearing to "follow" or trail the path of the sun.
The Astrophysics Reality: Modern celestial mechanics and heliocentric orbital dynamics demonstrate that the moon does not "follow" the sun in any physical or structural sense. The moon orbits the Earth due to localized gravitational attraction, while the Earth and moon system simultaneously orbit the Sun.