Posted on 07/06/2026 12:55:02 PM PDT by MtnClimber
Explanation: What are these two bands in the sky? The more commonly seen band is on the left and is the central band of our Milky Way galaxy. Our Sun orbits in the disk of this spiral galaxy so that from inside, it appears as a band of comparable brightness all the way around the sky. The less commonly seen band, on the right, 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, this ribbon of zodiacal light can appear quite prominent. It was discovered only in this century that zodiacal dust was mostly expelled by comets that have passed near Jupiter. The featured image was captured about a year ago from the Atacama Desert in Chile.
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For more detail go to the link and click on the image for a high definition image. You can then move the magnifying glass cursor then click to zoom in and click again to zoom out. When zoomed in you can scan by moving the side bars on the bottom and right side of the image.
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In the Atacama Desert you will find the Atacama Giant: an anthropomorphic geoglyph that is speculated to have acted as a lunar calendar for indigenous farmers of the region.
Dueling bands?
Izzat like Pink Floyd versus Lynyrd Skynyrd?............
Zodiacal Light sounds like an Enya cover band.
What a great photo. It has to be really dark. I have never been under skies that dark.
Skynyrd and Aerosmith
That’s definitely better than dueling banjos.
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