A faint cone of light in the night sky extending upward from the horizon in the direction of the ecliptic ( zodiac). It is seen at tropical latitudes for a few hours after sunset or before sunrise. It is mainly explained by the forward scattering of sunlight by particles in interplanetary space along the ecliptic.
a luminous tract in the sky; a reflection of sunlight from cosmic dust in the plane of the ecliptic; visible just before sunrise and just after sunset
A band of light visible along the ecliptic, the zodiacal light is produced by asteroid and comet debris scattering sunlight.
A faint glow that extends away from the Sun in the ecliptic plane of the sky, visible to the naked eye in the western sky shortly after sunset or in the eastern sky shortly before sunrise. Its spectrum indicates it to be sunlight scattered by interplanetary dust. ( Pioneer 10 has determined that its brightness varies inversely as the square of the distance out to 2.25 AU and then decreases more rapidly.) The zodiacal light contributes about a third of the total light in the sky on a moonless night. [H76
A faint cone of light that can sometimes be seen above the horizon after sunset or before sunrise. Zodiacal light is caused by sunlight reflecting off small particles of material in the plane of the solar system.
The "False Dawn" of the The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. It is now believed to be sunlight reflected from the cosmic dust left over from the formation of the planets, billions of years ago. It is usually seen projected as a faint backdrop to the Zodiac, either before dawn, or else after sunset, depending on the time of year.
The zodiacal light is a faint, roughly triangular, whitish glow seen in the night sky which appears to extend up from the vicinity of the sun along the ecliptic or zodiac. In mid-northern latitudes, the zodiacal light is best observed in the western sky in the spring after the evening twilight has completely disappeared, or in the eastern sky in the autumn just before the morning twilight appears. It is so faint that it is completely masked by either moonlight or light pollution.
