File:A spectacle of cosmic dust from Paranal (potw2431a).tiff
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[edit]DescriptionA spectacle of cosmic dust from Paranal (potw2431a).tiff |
English: This Picture of the Week takes you all the way to ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Chilean Atacama Desert, to enjoy a spectacular sunset next to the Very Large Telescope (VLT). But that’s not the only wonder displayed by the clear skies of the Atacama. See that blueish glow across the sky?The zodiacal light — also called “false dawn” when seen before sunrise — is a faint, diffuse band of light in the night sky, reaching up from the horizon. It follows the direction of the ecliptic — the plane of Earth's orbit around the Sun. This plane is rich in tiny particles of dust, which scatter sunlight and create this phenomenon. The other planets in the Solar System orbit the Sun in roughly the same plane, and therefore can be often seen within the zodiacal light. In this particular image, Venus is the brightest source and Mars is the faint, reddish dot to the upper-right of Venus.If you’ve never seen zodiacal light before, you’re not alone: the glow is so faint that light pollution or even moonlight can outshine it. Luckily, the Atacama Desert still preserves the full glory of its night skies, a heritage to be protected. How appropriate also that the VLT Unit Telescope enjoying this spectacle of sunlight in the image is the one nicknamed Antu, which, in the Mapudungun language of central-southern Chile, means “The Sun”. |
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Date | 29 July 2024 (upload date) | ||
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Author | D. Gasparri/ESO | ||
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Licensing
[edit]This media was created by the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
Their website states: "Unless specifically noted, the images, videos, and music distributed on the public ESO website, along with the texts of press releases, announcements, pictures of the week, blog posts and captions, are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, and may on a non-exclusive basis be reproduced without fee provided the credit is clear and visible." To the uploader: You must provide a link (URL) to the original file and the authorship information if available. | |
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
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Date/Time | Thumbnail | Dimensions | User | Comment | |
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current | 07:15, 29 July 2024 | 4,240 × 2,832 (17.5 MB) | OptimusPrimeBot (talk | contribs) | #Spacemedia - Upload of https://www.eso.org/public/archives/images/original/potw2431a.tif via Commons:Spacemedia |
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Date and time of data generation | 01:17, 18 June 2023 |
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File change date and time | 13:54, 9 July 2024 |
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Date and time of digitizing | 01:17, 18 June 2023 |
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