Giant 'X' appears over Chile as 2 celestial beams of light cross: Space photo of the week

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The bright band of the Milky Way and the faint glow of "zodiacal light" meet above the mountains of Chile's Atacama Desert in this stunning night sky photo.

Photograph taken of the night sky showing the Milky Way and zodiacal light crisscross above the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.

The Milky Way and zodiacal light crisscross above the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. (Image credit: CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Horálek (Institute of Physics in Opava))
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What it is: The luminous band of the Milky Way and the faint glow of zodiacal light

Where it is: Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, Chile

When it was shared: Aug. 6, 2025

This image was taken at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), located at an altitude of 7,200 feet (2,200 meters) in the Chilean Andes within the southern Atacama Desert. At this height, above the densest and warmest part of Earth’s atmosphere, incredibly clear and dark skies are the norm, enabling observers to see not only the bright band of the Milky Way but something less obvious that resides in the solar system — zodiacal light.

The biggest visible solar system phenomenon in the night sky, zodiacal light is a faint, diffuse glow in the night sky that casual observers often miss. It consists of sunlight reflecting off dust in our cosmic neighborhood, possibly from passing asteroids and comets or from the leftovers of planet formation. In 2020, a paper also claimed that zodiacal light may be primarily made of dust blown off Mars. Either way, the glow of the solar system is an arresting sight, but hard to see.

Zodiacal light is at its brightest around the equinoxes and is visible along the ecliptic — the apparent path the sun takes through the sky — as a triangular beam of light on the horizon a few hours before sunrise or after sunset. That timing has led to it being called either the "false dawn" or "false dusk," though its name comes from the fact that it’s visible over the 13 constellations that make up the zodiac.

Horálek’s spectacular image was taken in 2022 when he was an audiovisual ambassador for NOIRLab, which operates CTIO. In the photo, from left to right, are the U.S. Naval Observatory Deep South Telescope, the DIMM1 Seeing Monitor, the Chilean Automatic Supernova Search dome, the UBC Southern Observatory and the Planetary Defense 1.0-meter Telescope.

Jamie Carter
Jamie Carter
Live Science contributor

Jamie Carter is a Cardiff, U.K.-based freelance science journalist and a regular contributor to Live Science. He is the author of A Stargazing Program For Beginners and co-author of The Eclipse Effect, and leads international stargazing and eclipse-chasing tours. His work appears regularly in Space.com, Forbes, New Scientist, BBC Sky at Night, Sky & Telescope, and other major science and astronomy publications. He is also the editor of WhenIsTheNextEclipse.com.

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