  The zodiacal light is a night-glow mostly visible along the plane of the
ecliptic. It represents the background radiation associated with solar light
scattered by the tenuous flattened interplanetary cloud of dust particles
surrounding the Sun and the planets. It is an interesting subject of study, as
the source of the micrometeoroids falling on Earth, as a link to the activity
of the small bodies of the Solar System, but also as a foreground that veils
the low brightness extrasolar astronomical light sources.
  In this review, we summarize the zodiacal light observations that have been
done from the ground and from space in brightness and polarization at various
wavelength ranges. Local properties of the interplanetary dust particles in
some given locations can be retrieved from the inversion of the zodiacal light
integrated along the light-of-sight. We show that the current community
consensus favors that the majority of the interplanetary dust particles
detected at 1 au originate from the activity of comets.
  Our current understanding of the interplanetary dust particles properties is
then discussed in the context of the recent results from the Rosetta rendezvous
space mission with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
