Skip to content
zodiacal light

File:Night_Sky_from_Hawai‘i_and_Chile_(iotw2225c).jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

EntityQ204079· pop 57· linked from 174 articles

zodiacal light

Sign in to save

Also known as false dawn

glow in the night sky appearing to extend from the Sun's direction and along the zodiac

AI overview

Zodiacal light is a faint glow that appears in the night sky extending from where the Sun is located and stretching along the zodiac (the band of constellations the Sun passes through). It's caused by sunlight reflecting off dust particles in space and is most visible under very dark skies during twilight hours.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

~10 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Two false dawns, gegenschein (middle) and the rest of the zodiacal band of light and zodiac marked (visually crossed by the Milky Way), in this composite image of the night sky above the Northern and Southern Hemisphere

The zodiacal light (also called false dawn when seen before sunrise) is a faint glow of diffuse sunlight scattered by interplanetary dust. Brighter around the Sun, it appears in a particularly dark night sky to extend from the Sun's direction in a roughly triangular shape along the zodiac, and appears with less intensity and visibility along the whole ecliptic as the zodiacal band. Zodiacal light spans the entire sky and contributes to the natural light of a clear and moonless night sky. A related phenomenon is gegenschein (or counterglow), sunlight backscattered from the interplanetary dust, which appears directly opposite to the Sun as a faint but slightly brighter oval glow.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “zodiacal light” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

Gallery (7)