Belt of Venus

The Belt of Venus is a pinkish glow visible in the sky during twilight, shortly before dawn or after dusk, appearing on the side of the sky opposite the setting or rising Sun and extending roughly 10 to 20 degrees above the horizon. It forms from the backscatter of reddened sunlight, the same Rayleigh-scattered light that colors sunrise and sunset, bounced back toward the observer by fine particles in the atmosphere on the opposite side of the sky. As twilight deepens, a darker band, the shadow of the Earth itself, sometimes called the twilight wedge, rises beneath the pink arch and separates it from the horizon. The band appears more vivid in winter, when colder air holds less humidity and the atmosphere is more stable, and fainter and more yellow-orange in summer; the name comes from the cestus, the girdle worn by the goddess Venus in classical mythology, even though the planet Venus itself is never actually located within the band.