Siberian Zodiacal Light

The Siberian astronomer and long time night sky photographer captured this fascinating view of morning Zodiacal Light from his motherland village not far from Novosibirsk. The dream like image is a result of innovative processing methods to provide a view very close to what has seen from the location. As noted by the photographer “Since our retina does an excellent work in real time to create fine views from a scene with this huge brightness range, sometimes only complicated multi stage image processing can result in the same view”. Zodiacal Light is an unusual triangle of light visible along the ecliptic before dawn and after dusk under dark skies, specially in pre-dawn sky of late Summer and early Autumn and just after dusk in late winter and early spring (considered for northern hemisphere and the opposite for southern viewers). Once considered a false dawn, it is actually the light reflected from interplanetary dust particles which orbit the Sun predominantly in the same plane as the planets: the ecliptic. Zodiacal light is so bright at those mentioned time of year because the dust band is oriented nearly vertical at sunrise or sunset, so that the thick air near the horizon does not block out relatively bright reflecting dust.