Large ‘X’ seems over Chile as 2 celestial beams of sunshine cross: Area photograph of the week

This gorgeous picture from astrophotographer Petr Horálek captures two of the evening sky’s most superb sights in a single — the glowing coronary heart of the Milky Way and the elusive “zodiacal light.” Despite showing alongside each other, these two streaks of sunshine couldn’t be extra totally different in origin and composition.

Astronomers have constructed a few of humanity’s finest telescopes within the Southern Hemisphere to higher see the brilliant core of the Milky Way — dense with stars and nebulae. That core passes by means of constellations together with Scorpius, Sagittarius and Ophiuchus, that are larger within the sky the farther south they’re considered from.

This picture was taken on the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), situated at an altitude of seven,200 ft (2,200 meters) within the Chilean Andes inside the southern Atacama Desert. At this peak, above the densest and warmest a part of Earth’s ambiance, extremely clear and darkish skies are the norm, enabling observers to see not solely the brilliant band of the Milky Way however one thing much less apparent that resides within the solar system — zodiacal light.

The biggest visible solar system phenomenon in the night sky, zodiacal light is a faint, diffuse glow in the night sky that casual observers often miss. It consists of sunlight reflecting off dust in our cosmic neighborhood, possibly from passing asteroids and comets or from the leftovers of planet formation. In 2020, a paper additionally claimed that zodiacal mild could also be primarily fabricated from mud blown off Mars. Either means, the glow of the photo voltaic system is an arresting sight, however arduous to see.

Zodiacal mild is at its brightest across the equinoxes and is seen alongside the ecliptic — the obvious path the solar takes by means of the sky — as a triangular beam of sunshine on the horizon just a few hours earlier than dawn or after sundown. That timing has led to it being referred to as both the “false dawn” or “false dusk,” although its title comes from the truth that it’s seen over the 13 constellations that make up the zodiac.

Horálek’s spectacular picture was taken in 2022 when he was an audiovisual ambassador for NOIRLab, which operates CTIO. In the photograph, from left to proper, are the U.S. Naval Observatory Deep South Telescope, the DIMM1 Seeing Monitor, the Chilean Automatic Supernova Search dome, the UBC Southern Observatory and the Planetary Defense 1.0-meter Telescope.