Zodiacal light: a startling glow of interplanetary dust was filmed over an observatory in Chile. Photo

In the sky above Chile recorded the Zodiacal light. This is a glow scattered by interplanetary dust.

Pink-purple twilight haze recorded over the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). The glow over the Paranal Observatory in Chile's Atacama Desert is caused by sunlight reflecting off dust particles in the evening sky, Space.com writes.

Interplanetary dust in the solar system forms the so-called zodiacal cloud that covers the ecliptic - the plane of Earth's orbit around the Sun. The scattered light is drawn behind the direction of the ecliptic, running along the center of the zodiac. Therefore, the glowing phenomenon is called zodiacal light.

"Other planets in the solar system revolve around the Sun in roughly the same plane, and so they can often be seen within the zodiacal light," the European Southern Observatory said.

The zodiac can be divided into 12 equal parts along the ecliptic, corresponding to the western constellations: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces.

"In this particular image, Venus is the brightest source and Mars is the faint red dot in the upper right corner of Venus," ESO noted.

In the submitted photo, the faint band of zodiacal light stretches from the horizon and can be seen to the left of one of the VLT telescopes called Antu, translated as "sun."

According to scientists, the VLT consists of four telescopes that are the world's most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory. The telescopes work together to produce detailed views of the cosmos and have contributed to a number of important discoveries through more than two decades of observations, including the first image of an exoplanet.

Only verified information from us in Telegram-channel OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes!