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There are five stability points in the Earth-Moon system where gravity forces hold objects in position. Scientists call these "Lagrange points", numbered from L1 to L5. In 1961, the Polish astronomer Kazimierz Kordylewski claimed to have taken pictures of the dust that formed two cloudy plates at L4 and L5. Astronomers now call these clouds Kordylewski.
But as dust clouds are so weak, some scientists are still discussing their existence, according to a statement, but a team of Hungarian scientists is confident they have confirmed the existence of these clouds with new observations.
"We are certain that the Kordylewski dust cloud exists at the L5 Lagrange point of the Earth-Moon system," said in an e-mail the author of the study, Gábor Horváth of the University Eötvös Loránd. "The polarization characteristics detected can not be explained by any other optical phenomenon."
Earlier this year, the team, which includes Judit Slíz-Balogh from Eötvös Loránd University and András Barta, modeled these clouds to assess how they could be formed and best identified.
The team then used linear polarizing filters attached to a camera lens and a sensitive photon detector in Slíz-Balogh's private observatory to take views of the expected location of the L5 cloud. The cloud is not very bright, but it is clearly polarized, according to Slíz-Balogh. And that's how the research team said they managed to capture him.
"Many astronomers assume that these dust clouds do not exist," Horváth said. They assume that the sun, the solar wind and other planets can disrupt the orbit of the dust cloud.
However, continues Horváth, with these new observations, "the only explanation remains the polarized diffusion of the sunlight on the particles collected around the point L5".
This work appears in two new articles in Monthly Notices from the Royal Astronomical Society: here and here.
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