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Mosaic pattern of the angle of polarization around the L5 point (white dot) of the Earth-Moon system. The five rectangular windows correspond to the fields of view of the imaging polarimetric telescope with which the polarization patterns of the Kordylewski dust cloud were measured. (Credit: J. Slíz-Balogh/Eötvös Loránd University)J. Slíz-Balogh/Eötvös Loránd University
Earlier this year, a Hungarian team led by Gábor Horváth of Eötvös Loránd University, modelled the Kordylewski clouds to assess how they form and how they might be detected. They theorized that the clouds could appear if they used polarising filters, like those used in sunglasses, to pick up scattered, reflected light from the dust.
With a linearly polarising filter system attached to a camera lens and CCD detector at co-author Judit Slíz-Balogh’s private observatory in Hungary, the team was able to pick up polarised light reflected from dust, extending well outside the field of view of the camera lens, at L5. The pattern matches both their own predictions about where the dust-moon should be and the observations originally made by Kordylewski.
“The Kordylewski clouds are two of the toughest objects to find, and though they are as close to Earth as the Moon are largely overlooked by researchers in astronomy. It is intriguing to confirm that our planet has dusty pseudo-satellites in orbit alongside our lunar neighbour,” said Slíz-Balogh in a statement for the Royal Astronomical Society.
It’s also a discovery that warrants further exploration. Because of their stability, the Lagrange points are often touted as potential sites for space stations that would enable deeper exploration of the galaxy as jumping off points for trips to Mars and further, refuelling stations for mining operations, somewhere to store pollutants or even places to live. But scientists will have to first know if the dust there presents any threat to potential spacecraft or future astronauts.
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A team of astronomers and physicist claim to have confirmed that Earth has two ghostly dust-moons just a few hundred thousand miles away, according to a new study.
The elusive Kordylewski dust clouds, named for the Polish astronomer Kazimierz Kordylewski who first spotted them in 1961, are a controversial topic. First theorized in the 50s, the clouds are said to gather around the semi-stable Lagrange points L4 and L5, where gravitational forces maintain the relative position of objects and which move around the Earth as the Moon moves in its orbit.
But they are so faint that their very existence is questionable. Kordylewski observed two clusters of dust at L5 in 1961 and other reports have backed him up, but the pseudo-satellites aren’t always observable. The Japanese Hiten space probe, for example, failed to detect the clouds using the Munich Dust Counter, an impact ionization detector designed to determine mass and velocity of cosmic dust, when it passed through the L4 and L5 points in 2009.
Mosaic pattern of the angle of polarization around the L5 point (white dot) of the Earth-Moon system. The five rectangular windows correspond to the fields of view of the imaging polarimetric telescope with which the polarization patterns of the Kordylewski dust cloud were measured. (Credit: J. Slíz-Balogh/Eötvös Loránd University)J. Slíz-Balogh/Eötvös Loránd University
Earlier this year, a Hungarian team led by Gábor Horváth of Eötvös Loránd University, modelled the Kordylewski clouds to assess how they form and how they might be detected. They theorized that the clouds could appear if they used polarising filters, like those used in sunglasses, to pick up scattered, reflected light from the dust.
With a linearly polarising filter system attached to a camera lens and CCD detector at co-author Judit Slíz-Balogh’s private observatory in Hungary, the team was able to pick up polarised light reflected from dust, extending well outside the field of view of the camera lens, at L5. The pattern matches both their own predictions about where the dust-moon should be and the observations originally made by Kordylewski.
“The Kordylewski clouds are two of the toughest objects to find, and though they are as close to Earth as the Moon are largely overlooked by researchers in astronomy. It is intriguing to confirm that our planet has dusty pseudo-satellites in orbit alongside our lunar neighbour,” said Slíz-Balogh in a statement for the Royal Astronomical Society.
It’s also a discovery that warrants further exploration. Because of their stability, the Lagrange points are often touted as potential sites for space stations that would enable deeper exploration of the galaxy as jumping off points for trips to Mars and further, refuelling stations for mining operations, somewhere to store pollutants or even places to live. But scientists will have to first know if the dust there presents any threat to potential spacecraft or future astronauts.
