As we approach the new moon towards the end of the week, you may start to see a special phenomenon. Go to the western horizon about an hour and a half after sunset to catch a glimpse of the zodiacal light glowing like a triangle up into the sky along the ecliptic. 

This is sometimes known as false dusk light, an eerie kind of upwards glow lasting for about an hour. This is created by the Sun shining on dust particles generated by the inner planets of our solar system. It happens when the Earth’s tilted relationship to the Sun reaches a certain angle during the equinox, and the ecliptic is perpendicular to the horizon.

You can see the Zodiacal light on dark nights beginning in February leading up to March 21st ending in early May. The closer you are to the equator in the Northern Hemisphere, the stronger it will be. The further up you are in latitude toward the poles, the less chance you have of seeing them. .

If you are in the Southern Hemisphere you will also see the zodiacal lights during the simultaneous fall equinox—but reversed, appearing an hour and a half before sunrise to the east.

If you are standing on the equator where daylight and darkness are in equilibrium, you could see it all year long during dark nights, but less pronounced.

The opposite also happens. When we in the Northern Hemisphere approach fall equinox then we see the Zodiacal light shining in the east before sunrise, while simultaneously in the Southern Hemisphere during their spring equinox the light will rise up in the west after sunset.

This reversal appearance reflected on either side of the Hemispheres is interesting. It is as if there is a dialogue between pre-dawn and post-dusk stretching across the center of the Earth during the time of equilibrium, like a kind of reaching across the threshold: a conversation between North and South, night and day. This is the kind of weaving we do on our journey between falling asleep and waking into day, a sense that there is a continuity between our conscious and unconscious life. We gather the questions of the day, bring them into the night and transform them into new possibilities for the next day. During the day, we work out the night experience with new questions to return once again into the unknown.

The Sufi poet Hafiz wrote “All the hemispheres in existence lie beside an equator in your heart. All the hemispheres in heaven stich themselves together into the great circle inside you.”

When we fall asleep, our astral body expands into the entire starry cosmos where the zodiacal constellations and planets shine into us. Here we live with the world of the stars.

— Sabrina Dalla Valle, Senior Cosmic Analyst