Community | October 28, 2008 | 10 comments

The Mysterious Zodiacal Light

source: http://www.space.com/spacewatch/081024-ns-zodiacal-light.html

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NYChris
During the next few weeks on some clear moonless early morning, if you are fortunate to be far from any haze and bright lights, keep a close watch on the eastern horizon about two hours before sunrise. If you're lucky you might catch a glimpse of a ghostly column of light extending upward into the sky.

Many have been fooled into thinking that it's beginning of morning twilight and indeed the Persian astronomer, mathematician and poet Omar Khayyam (1050? -1123?) referred to this ghostly glow as the "false dawn" in his poem, The Rubaiyat.

That faint ghostly glow was once thought to be solely an atmospheric phenomenon: perhaps reflected sunlight shining on the highest layers of Earth's atmosphere. We know now that while it is indeed reflected sunlight, it is being reflected not off our atmosphere, but rather off of a non-uniform distribution of interplanetary material; debris left over from the formation of our solar system.
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