Dueling Bands in the Night

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.

Page 2

What has happened to our Sun? The largest prominence ever imaged together with a complete solar disk was produced last month. The sun-orbiting Solar Orbiter captured the record image in ultraviolet light. A quiescent solar prominence is a cloud of hot gas above the Sun's surface. The length of this solar prominence was larger than the diameter of the Sun. Hot gas may be expelled from the Solar System via a coronal mass ejection. Auroras may occur when a CME strikes the Earth. It was directed away from the Earth, but it did produce a CME. Although surely related to the Sun's changing magnetic field, the energy mechanism that creates and sustains a solar prominence remains a topic of research.