Jan 25, 2010: Zodiacal Light

Zodiacal Light, sounds like the quickie horoscopes from fortune cookies, or the newspaper's comics page.
Actually, Zodiacal Light is a fancy name for the Sun's tail. :haha:

The zodiacal light is sunlight reflected by dust particles between the Sun and Earth, and is best seen close to sunrise or sunset. As its name implies, this celestial glow appears in the ring of constellations known as the zodiac. These are found along the ecliptic, which is the eastward apparent “path” that the Sun traces across Earth’s sky.

See, dirt is good, you clean freaks. :p

link

Looks like an egg frying in the sea.

Yes, except the sea is clouds... at about 8,000 ft.

right. hence the "looks like...." :rolleyes:

..it looks like an egg frying in the sea, but actually it's not an egg or the sea. funny business, this

Zodiacal Light? Yeah right. That's just my neighbor's house lit up like the state pen.

monster;629757 wrote:

Looks like an egg frying in the sea.

Similie win!

FWIW, the zodiacal light is the haze in the sky, not the lights on the ground. :rolleyes:

Pie;629804 wrote:

FWIW, the zodiacal light is the haze in the sky, not the lights on the ground. :rolleyes:

I thought the ground was the clouds at 8000 feet? Therefore, the egg in the sea is sky.

"The La Silla Observatory is located at the outskirts of the Chilean Atacama Desert, one of the driest and loneliest areas of the world. Like other observatories in this geographical area, La Silla is located far from sources of light pollution and, like the Paranal Observatory, home to the Very Large Telescope, it has one of the darkest night skies on the Earth."

Actually, the egg could be in the sea. La Silla is about 40 miles from the Pacific ocean. Using Google Earth, you can see that the ocean is visible from there.

The photograph was taken at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile in September 2009, facing west some minutes after the Sun had set. A sea of clouds has settled in the valley below La Silla, which sits at an altitude of 2400 metres, with lesser peaks and ridges poking through the mist.

The yellow fried egg is the sun shining through the clouds from below.

The sun's in the plane of the ecliptic, so it would be co-linear with the zodiacal light. The bright semi-foreground object is not in that plane.

So it must be an egg.

I think it's the lights from the coastal village of Los Choros (29 17' 26"S, 71 18' 34"W) lighting up some fog.

Fire! Fire! [/beavis]

Another example....

...and the Photoshop. :p

nice one pie ;)

glatt;629835 wrote:

I think it's the lights from the coastal village of Los Choros (29 17' 26"S, 71 18' 34"W) lighting up some fog.

Dingdingding. We have a winnah! (works for me, anyway)

I like the German name for this phenomenon, which I believe is "Gegenschein".

[applauds pie]

i love this image

glatt;629835 wrote:

I think it's the lights from the coastal village of Los Choros (29 17' 26"S, 71 18' 34"W) lighting up some fog.

I think you're right... or it could be the light from Pie's kitchen light fixture in the sky. :haha:

It's a shark.

(for clarity, the ps wasn't mine, just something I found whilst googling.)

Nice Googling, Pie! :blush:

Spexxvet;630095 wrote:

Nice Googling Pie! :blush:

Is that a euphemism?