                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                                2022 March 1

                         Dueling Bands in the Night
                  Image Credit & Copyright: Jeff Dai (TWAN)

   Explanation: What are these two bands in the sky? The more commonly
   seen band is the one on the right and is the central band of our Milky
   Way galaxy. Our Sun orbits in the disk of this spiral galaxy, so that
   from inside, this disk appears as a band of comparable brightness all
   the way around the sky. The Milky Way band can also be seen all year --
   if out away from city lights. The less commonly seem band, on the left,
   is zodiacal light -- sunlight reflected from dust orbiting the Sun in
   our Solar System. Zodiacal light is brightest near the Sun and so is
   best seen just before sunrise or just after sunset. On some evenings in
   the north, particularly during the months of March and April, this
   ribbon of zodiacal light can appear quite prominent after sunset. It
   was determined only this century that zodiacal dust was mostly expelled
   by comets that have passed near Jupiter. Only on certain times of the
   year will the two bands be seen side by side, in parts of the sky, like
   this. The featured image, including the Andromeda galaxy and a meteor,
   was captured in late January over a frozen lake in Kanding, Sichuan,
   China.

                  Tomorrow's picture: it came from the sun
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
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                             & Michigan Tech. U.

