U.S. Naval Observatory – Flagstaff Station (click to enlarge)
The zodiacal light at 7:51 pm (MST) on February 10, 2015, as seen from the west parking lot of the U.S. Naval Observatory near Flagstaff. If you’re wondering where the Observatory is, it’s about five miles west of downtown (Google maps link).
Below are two versions of a stack of eight 30-second exposures taken with a ZWO ASI120MM camera mounted on a camera tripod. This was 1h 47m after sunset (6:04 pm), and 21 minutes after the end of astronomical twilight (7:30 pm). You can see several naked-eye astronomical wonders, which are marked on the annotated version:
- the planets Uranus, Mars, and Venus in the glow of the zodiacal light
- the Pleiades star cluster, upper middle
- the open cluster, M35, upper left
- comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy), just below the flagpole
- the Andromeda Galaxy, also just below the flagpole
- M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, below the flagpole
- the Double Cluster in Perseus, above the flagpole
- M42, the Orion Nebula, over to the left by the 61-inch telescope dome
- the light pollution dome from Phoenix(!), lower left, 120 miles away
Zodiacal light from NOFS, 2015-02-11 (click to enlarge)
Zodiacal light from NOFS, 2015-02-11, with annotations (click to enlarge)