The softly glowing zodiac: lesson learned

Every day I post a short, pithy astronomy or space fact on Twitter and Google+. I call them BAFacts, and I have them all archived here on the blog. I try to make them as accurate as possible within the limitation of 140 characters. But I wrote one recently that, as it turns out, I had to retract for being incorrect. And I'm happy about it! Here's why. I recently was going through old posts and saw one that mentioned zodiacal light, a very faint glow in the sky that can only be seen on very dark nights. It's a band of light that follows the path of the planets across the sky, which is technically called the ecliptic. It passes through the constellations of the zodiac, hence its name*.