The night sky illuminated by a mysterious light …
Meet one of the rarest astronomical phenomena: the zodiacal light. It can be seen with the naked eye. For the next two weeks, immediately after the onset of twilight (if you are lucky, there will be no thick clouds and clouds, and the moon or bright artificial lighting does not interfere) in the sky, you can observe a weak zodiacal light in the plane of the ecliptic along the entire earth's orbit.
Zodiacal light is one of the most beautiful properties of the solar system, but very rare. Even not all astronomers have observed it at least once in their lives. This dim glow is generated by millions of tiny particles located in the plane of the ecliptic.
The solar system formed more than 4.5 billion years ago and was a cloud of gas and dust revolving around a new star. Objects now known as planets and asteroids formed from this cloud, but some of the dust remained at the periphery of the solar system. This interplanetary dust mostly becomes visible when the Earth passes through it and small particles (meteors) burn up in the upper atmosphere, leaving a luminous trail.
A myriad of faint stars create an amorphous glow known as the Milky Way. Likewise, the accumulation of particles that make up the interplanetary dust cloud cause an even weaker glow, called the zodiacal light (ecliptic means the obsolete "zodiacal circle").
The phenomenon is noticeable mainly on a dark moonless night, especially during those periods of the year when the ecliptic, perceived from the Earth as the path of the Sun across the sky, reaches its maximum angle with the horizon.
Zodiacal light is best seen in the evening sky in February and March during the waning moon, which does not overshoot until midnight. The observation site should be in complete darkness, without the slightest light sources.
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The phenomenon can be seen in the western part of the sky two hours after sunset, when its scattered rays completely disappear. Zodiacal light will appear as an extremely faintly luminous cone along the ecliptic. It should not be confused with the Milky Way in the northwestern sky. The zodiacal cone will grow towards the bright Pleiades star cluster in the constellation Taurus.