Aurora, zodiacal light, and seeing Earth from Orion

18:26that image. What we're seeing is some kind of landmass. And a lot of people were really confused. Like, oh, what part of Earth is that? >> Uh-huh. >> That part of Earth is Europe and Africa and the Mediterranean Strait and the Gibraltar Strait there, >> Right. >> upside down. >> I was going to say the uh flip. Yeah, yeah yeah. >> It's us, it's upside down, because the Europeans conquered the world. And so, north is like where Europe is. But, I think what's cool about this photo is that it shows it's completely arbitrary. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> Right? Which way is north and which way is south? We've just decided, but on the right-hand side, it shows a inset of a map where the Earth is actually upside down, but the text is correct

19:07>> Yes. >> correctly like, you know, positioned. It it it I I think it's really cool exercise in like knowing, "Okay, actually it's completely arbitrary in space." >> Which way is down, which way is up. >> For those who are listening, we're looking at the map and we see Libya and Algeria at the top. >> And Morocco. >> And Morocco above like Spain, Portugal, etc. >> Yeah. >> Uh it's such a bizarre >> Yeah, it's it's a bizarre thing to see because usually we see the Mediterranean and that area, you know, turned around. But I'm just saying it's completely arbitrary and I think that image kind of proves that. >> Yeah. >> It's kind of cool. The other thing we see on this image is in the left-hand side we see faint glows, uh greenish glows. That's the aurora

19:49>> Yes. >> in the northern hemisphere, the aurora borealis. If we go to the next photo, >> Yes. >> we will see the aurora australis, which is over the South Pole. That's where the magnetic field of the Earth is coming out, interacting with those particles. So the all of the particles from the Van Van Allen belt, you know, I said the Van Allen belt is a donut, right? >> Yes. >> Well, the donut has to intersect >> somewhere. >> with the Earth somewhere and it intersects at the north and south magnetic poles. And when it intersects, you get the beautiful aurora northern and southern lights. In this case, we're seeing the southern lights. >> Yes. >> Right? >> Yes, beautiful. >> Absolutely beautiful. And finally at the bottom right corner, we see a tiny glow

20:30>> I love this photo. >> right? Coming out of the Earth. >> Yeah. >> That glow in deep space is called a zodiacal light. >> Oh. >> So, there is dust that is trapped in the same plane as all of the planets. >> Thankfully not nuclear dust, but that's not nice. >> just normal dust. And if you're really lucky as a photographer, you can observe the zodiacal light on Earth right after sunset, right before sunrise. On the right-hand side we see Jupiter and Venus, so that we know that the plane of the zodiac is over there, right? Because that's where the planetary plane is. And you can see the sort of glow of dust. That dust is literally just dust hanging around that never got to any

21:11The dust is stuff that never got to any planet and it's just there in our plane, but it's scattering off the sunlight and we're seeing that. And so on the right-hand side we see it from Earth if you have perfect conditions and on the left-hand side you see the zodiacal light sort of out in deep space. Just absolutely wonderful. >> In California we we like to try to pretend we call this golden hour, but this is above what we get as golden hour. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is You'd have to go like way out in like Joshua Tree or something to see zodiacal light. We have too much light pollution around LA to see this kind of stuff. >> sense. That makes sense. >> You know? And as you get farther away from Earth