Scattered sunlight at Paranal

In the foreground, we can see the white Meteorological Tower of Paranal. The small dome contains a telescope dedicated to monitoring the atmospheric seeing conditions, known as a Differential Image Motion Monitor (DIMM.) In the sky at the upper left side of the this fish-eye (fulldome) picture, we can see the Gegenschein, that is a faint brightening of the night sky in the region of the antisolar point. like the zodiacal light, the gegenschein is sunlight scattered by interplanetary dust. Most of this dust is orbiting the Sun in about the ecliptic plane. It is distinguished from zodiacal light by its high angle of reflection of the incident sunlight on the dust particles. In the upper right side, is also visible the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and above it, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). Envolving the entire sky, we can see the presence of green airglow.