Direct Projection: The Moon in My Hands

You don't have to look through a telescope to see where it is pointing. Allowing the telescope to project its image onto a large surface can be useful because it reduces the intense brightness of very bright sources. It is useful to look at the Sun during a solar eclipse. There is a too-bright full moon projected in the featured single-exposure image. The February full moon is called the Snow Moon by some northern cultures. The main telescope at the Saint-Véran Observatory is a 62-centimeter telescope. It is easier to see a full moon directly because it is not as bright. The next chance will be on March 17.

Page 2

What are the two bands in the sky? The band on the right is the central band of the universe. Our Sun is in the disk of a spiral galaxy and it appears as a band of comparable brightness all the way around the sky. The band can be seen all year long if it's not in the city. The band on the left is zodiacal light, which reflects sunlight from the Sun in our Solar System. Zodiacal light is best seen just before sunrise or after sunset. During the months of March and April, this ribbon of zodiacal light can be seen after sunset. The zodiacal dust was mostly ejected by comets that passed near Jupiter. Only on certain times of the year will the two bands be seen side by side. The featured image was captured over a frozen lake in China in late January.