The constellation camera at the Operations Support Facility (OSF) has been successfully delivering the images of the Chilean night sky. This is not the best season for star observation since it tends to be affected by the moon, but we have chances to see beautiful starry skies before the moon goes up. The picture shows the zodiacal light in the western skies captured by the constellation camera. You can see a faint light band extending from the bottom to top in the middle of the picture. The zodiacal light is produced by sunlight reflecting off solid particles which are present around the Earths orbit in the solar system. Since the glow of the zodiacal light is weaker than that of the Milky Way, it can be seen only in fairly dark skies. As you can see, there are planets and solid particles on the planetary orbit called ecliptic planeE(the bright celestial body in the upper center is Jupiter). The famous sings of zodiacEused for astrology consist of twelve constellations on the ecliptic plane.
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