Zone of Avoidance
Sign in to saveAlso known as ZoA, Zone of Galactic Obscuration, ZGO, Zone of Few Nebulae
area in the sky obscured by the Milky Way.
~3 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The Milky Way creates a Zone of Avoidance for local observers. The Zone of Avoidance (ZOA, ZoA), or Zone of Galactic Obscuration (ZGO), is the area of the sky that is obscured by the Milky Way.
The Zone of Avoidance was originally called the Zone of Few Nebulae in an 1878 paper by English astronomer Richard Proctor that referred to the distribution of "nebulae" in John Herschel's General Catalogue of Nebulae.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Zone of Avoidance” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.