Zodiacal light
Zodiacal light is a faint, roughly triangular, diffuse white glow seen in the night sky that appears to extend up from the vicinity of the Sun along the ecliptic or zodiac.
Description
It is best seen just after sunset in spring, and just before sunrise in autumn, when the zodiac is at a steep angle to the horizon.
Caused by sunlight scattered by space dust in the zodiacal cloud, it is so faint that either moonlight or light pollution renders it invisible.
The zodiacal light decreases in intensity with distance from the Sun, but on very dark nights it has been observed in a band completely around the ecliptic.
In fact, the zodiacal light covers the entire sky, being responsible in large part for the total skylight on a moonless night.
Gegenschein
Another phenomenon—a faint, but slightly increased, oval glow directly opposite the Sun—is called the gegenschein.
Zodiacal cloud
The dust forms a thick pancake-shaped cloud in the Solar System collectively known as the zodiacal cloud, which occupies the same plane as the ecliptic.
The dust particles are between 10 and 300 micrometres in diameter, most with mass around 150 micrograms.
Brian May
In 2007, Brian May, lead guitarist with the band Queen, completed his PhD thesis A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud 36 years after having started and abandoning it to pursue a career in music.
He was able to submit it only because of the minimal amount of research on the topic undertaken during the intervening years.
May describes the subject as being one that became "trendy" again in the 2000s.
See also
- Exozodiacal dust
- Gegenschein
- Interplanetary dust cloud
- Islamic astronomy
- Light
- Optical phenomenon
- Kordylewski cloud
External links
- Zodiacal light @ Wikipedia
