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Diagram showing the Lagrangian points of the Earth-moon system. If they exist, Kordylewski clouds lie in the regions of L4 and L5. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) said this week (October 25, 2018) that astronomers may have confirmed the existence of two elusive dust clouds, orbiting Earth much as our moon orbits it, at about the moon's distance. They are known as Kordylewski cloudsKazimierz Kordylewski in 1961. If they exist, Earth's dust cloud satellites are exceptionally faint, so that their existence is controversial. The RAS is pointing to two new papers about the Kordylewski clouds in its peer-reviewed journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. It said in a statement that a team of Hungarian astronomers and physicists may have confirmed the clouds just where Kordylewski said they would be, in semi-stable points just 250,000 miles (400,000 km) from Earth.
For comparison, the moon's average distance is 238,900 miles (385,000 km) from Earth.
View larger. | Artist's concept of Kordylewski cloud in the night sky at the time of the observations. The brightness is greatly enhanced; we would not really see this cloud. Image via G. Horváth / RAS.
If they exist, the Kordylewski is at the Earth-moon system. These points – known as Lagrangian or Lagrange points – are known to be relatively stable, gravitationally. Objects, even dust, drifting near these points would not be able to move towards the Earth nor towards the moon. They would tend to stay put, moving ahead of and behind the moon in orbit. The RAS explained:
Two of these so-called Lagrange points, L4 and L5, form an equal-sided triangle with the Earth and moon, and move around the Earth as the moon moves along its orbit.
L4 and L5 are not completely stable, they are disturbed by the gravitational pull of the sun. Nonetheless they are thought to be where interplanetary dust might collect, at least. Kordylewski observed two nearby clusters of dust at L5 in 1961, with various reports since then, but their extreme faintness makes them difficult to detect and many scientists doubt their existence.
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In a paper earlier in 2018, the Hungarian team, led by Gábor Horváth of Eötvös Loránd University, modeled the Kordylewski clouds to assess how they form and how they can be detected. The researchers were interested in their appearance using polarizing filters, similar to those found on some types of sunglasses. The RAS explained:
Scattered or reflected light is always more or less polarized, depending on the angle of scattering or reflection.
AFter they determined what to look for, the researchers then set out to find the dust clouds. They set up a linearly polarizing filter system, attached to a camera lens and CCD detector, at Slíz-Balogh's private observatory in Hungary (Badacsonytördemic).
Then the scientists took part in the Kordylewski cloud at the L5 point.
The images they obtained show polarized light reflected, extending the field of view of the camera lens. The RAS said:
The observational pattern matches made by the same group of researchers in the paper and is consistent with the observations of the Kordylewski clouds six decades ago.
Horváth's group was able to understand the optical artifacts and other effects, meaning that the presence of the dust cloud is confirmed.
Pattern of the angle of polarization of the sky L5 Lagrange point of the Earth-moon system. Image acquired August 19, 2017. The position of the L5 is shown by a white dot. In this picture the central region of the Kordylewski dust cloud is visible (bright red pixels). The straight tilted lines are traces of satellites. Image via J. Slíz-Balogh / RAS.
Mosaic pattern of the angle of polarization around the L5 dot (white dot) of the Earth-moon system. The five rectangular windows correspond to the fields of view of polarimetric imaging with which the polarization patterns of the Kordylewski dust cloud have been measured. Image via J. Slíz-Balogh / RAS.
Judit Slíz-Balogh – who is collaborating with the scientific community? – commented:
The Kordylewski clouds are two of the toughest objects to find, and they are as close to the earth as they are. It is intriguing to confirm that our planet has dusty pseudo-satellites in orbit alongside our lunar neighbor.
The RAS said:
Given their stability, the L4 and L5 points are seen as potential sites for orbiting space probes, and as transfer stations for missions exploring the wider solar system. There are also proposals to pollutants at the two points.
Future research will look at the L4 and L5, and the associated Kordylewski clouds, to understand how stable they are, and whether they are future-proof.
Kazimierz Kordylewski proposed the existence of Earth's dust cloud satellites in 1961, and astronomers have been arguing about them since then. Have they now been confirmed? This 1964 image is via Wikimedia Commons.
Bottom line: Researchers say they have confirmed the existence of the Kordylewski dust clouds, which orbit at the L4 and L5 points in the Earth-moon system. In other words, the dust clouds orbit in the moon's orbit. They move ahead of and behind the moon in orbit.
Source # 1: Celestial mechanics and polarization optics of the Kordylewski dust cloud in the Earth-Moon Lagrange point L5 – Part I. Three-dimensional celestial mechanical modeling of cloud cloud formation
Source # 2: Celestial mechanics and polarization optics of the Kordylewski dust cloud in the Earth-Moon Lagrange point L5. Part II. Imaging polarimetric observation: new evidence for the existence of Kordylewski dust cloud
Via RAS
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