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.

                                2021 March 11

                           Zodiacal Light and Mars
                  Image Credit & Copyright: Joshua Rhoades

   Explanation: Just after sunset on March 7, a faint band of light still
   reaches above the western horizon in this serene, rural Illinois, night
   skyscape. Taken from an old farmstead, the luminous glow is zodiacal
   light, prominent in the west after sunset during planet Earth's
   northern hemisphere spring. On that clear evening the band of zodiacal
   light seems to engulf bright yellowish Mars and the Pleiades star
   cluster. Their close conjunction is in the starry sky above the old
   barn's roof. Zodiacal light is sunlight scattered by interplanetary
   dust particles that lie near the Solar System's ecliptic plane. Of
   course all the Solar System's planets orbit near the plane of the
   ecliptic, within the band of zodiacal light. But zodiacal light and
   Mars may have a deeper connection. A recent analysis of serendipitous
   detections of interplanetary dust by the Juno spacecraft during its
   Earth to Jupiter voyage suggest Mars is the likely source of the dust
   that produces zodiacal light.

                     Tomorrow's picture: pixels in space
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