14 APR 2012 by ideonexus
The Zodiacal Light
The zodiacal light is caused by sunlight reflecting from meteoric dust that orbits the sun in the plane of the solar system, remnants of the vast nebula of dust and gas out of which the solar system was born more than four billion years ago. Like the planets, this diffuse stream of particles reflects light, although faintly and rarely seen. Moonless nights of winter are the best time to see the zodiacal light. and nowhere better than here, on the Tropic of Cancer, where the plane of the solar...Chet Raymo describes seeing the light of our planetary disk of our solar system intersecting the light of the milky way galaxy.