Be sure to click here to see the full-sized version of the image above. It’s one of the most beautiful photos I’ve ever seen of the zodiacal light – sometimes called the ‘false dawn’ – which is most visible before sunrise during the autumn months. This image was made with the Faulkes Telescope on the island of Maui in Hawaii.

Maybe you’ve seen the zodiacal light in the sky for yourself. Maybe you’ve seen it and not realized it! You’re likely to see it while driving on a highway or country road – somewhere in the southern U.S. or similar latitudes – at this time of year. Suppose you’re driving east in the hour before dawn. You catch sight of what you think is the light of a nearby town, just over the horizon. You drive on, confident that food or a short rest is not far away. The light stays in view for half an hour or so, until true dawn begins to light the sky. But no town ever appears.

This strange light is a seasonal phenomenon. You’re most likely to see it in the east before dawn in the autumn months. In springtime, you see it most often in the west in the evening. It looks like a hazy pyramid of light extending up from the eastern horizon, an hour before true predawn twilight begins.

What is the false dawn?

The name ‘false dawn’ originated with the 12th century Persian astronomer, mathematician, and poet Omar Khayyam. In the 200th verse of his poem The Rubaiyat, he wrote:

When false dawn streaks the east with cold, gray line,
Pour in your cups the pure blood of the vine;
The truth, they say, tastes bitter in the mouth,
This is a token that the ‘Truth’ is wine.

The false dawn of the true sky is easier to understand that Omar Khayyam’s famous poem. People used to think it originated somehow from phenomena in Earth’s upper atmosphere, but today we understand it as sunlight reflecting off dust grains that move in outer space. These grains are thought to be left over from the process that created our Earth and the other planets of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago.

These dust grains in space spread out from the sun in the same flat disc of space inhabited by Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and the other planets in our sun’s family. This flat space around the sun – the plane of our solar system – translates on our sky to a narrow pathway called the ecliptic. This is the same pathway traveled by the sun and moon as they journey across our sky.

The pathway of the sun and moon was called the Zodiac or Pathway of Animals by our ancestors in honor of the constellations seen beyond it. The word zodiacal stems from the word Zodiac.

In other words, the zodiacal light is a solar system phenomenon. The grains of dust that create it are like tiny worlds – ranging from meter-sized to micron-sized – densest around the immediate vicinity of the sun and extending outward beyond the orbit of Mars. Sunlight shines on these grains of dust to create the light we see. Since they lie in the flat sheet of space around the sun, we could – in theory – see them as a band of dust across our entire sky, marking the same path that the sun follows during the day. And indeed there are sky phenomena associated with this band of dust, such as the gegenschein. But seeing such elusive sky phenomena as the gegenschein is difficult. Most of us see only the more obvious part of this dust band – the zodiacal light – in either spring or fall.

How you can see the zodiacal light

The zodiacal light can be extremely bright and easy to see from latitudes like those in the southern U.S., sometimes leading to the above situation where drivers mistake the lights for a town just over the horizon.

Meanwhile, skywatchers in the northern U.S. or Canada sometimes say, wistfully, that they’ve never seen it.

You’ll need a dark sky location to see this false dawn, or zodiacal light, someplace where city lights aren’t obscuring the natural lights in the sky. The zodiacal light is even milkier in appearance than the summer Milky Way. It’s most visible before dawn in autumn because, as seen from the northern hemisphere, the ecliptic – or path of the sun and moon – stands nearly straight up in autumn with respect to the eastern horizon before dawn. Likewise, the zodiacal light is easiest to see after sunset in springtime, because then the ecliptic is most perpendicular to the western horizon in the evening.

In autumn, the zodiacal light can be seen for up to an hour before true dawn begins to break. Or, in spring, it can be seen for up to an hour after twilight ends. Unlike true dawn, though, there’s no rosy color to the zodiacal light. The reddish skies at dawn and dusk are caused by Earth’s atmosphere, while the zodiacal light originates far outside our atmosphere, as explained above.

Look for the zodiacal light in the east before sunrise in September and October, around the time of the autumn equinox. Look for it in the west after sunset in March and April, around the time of the spring equinox. The darker your sky, the better your chances of seeing it. Your best bet is to pick a night when the moon is out of the sky, although it’s definitely possible, and very lovely, to see a slim crescent moon in the midst of this strange milky pyramid of light.

If you see it, let us know!