humboldt county, 2017 - expired fuji 800 press 

What are these two bands in the sky? The more commonly seen band is the one on the right and is the central band of our Milky Way galaxy. Our Sun orbits in the disk of this spiral galaxy, so from inside, the disk appears as a band all the way around the sky.

The less commonly seen band, on the left, is zodiacal light. This is sunlight that is reflected from dust orbiting the Sun in our Solar System. Zodiacal light is brightest near the Sun and can be seen the best just before sunrise or just after sunset. On some evenings in the north, particularly during the months of March and April, this ribbon of zodiacal light can appear quite prominent after sunset. It has recently been determined that zodiacal dust was mostly expelled by comets that have passed near Jupiter.

Only on certain times of the year will the two bands be seen side by side, in parts of the sky, like this. The featured panorama of consecutive exposures was recorded about three weeks ago in Denmark.