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Artistic interpretation of Kordylewski's clouds at night. A team of astronomers has just proved the existence of Kordylewski clouds decades after his proposal by Kazimierz Kordylewski. In one study, they confirmed that the dust clouds are located in the L5 layer between the Earth and the Moon. ( Royal Society of Astronomy )
A team of astronomers has confirmed the existence of two low-dust satellites floating about 400,000 km from Earth.
A new study examines a decades-old report by Kazimierz Kordylewski, who in 1961 proposed the existence of ghostly clouds that form between the Earth and the Moon. However, because of its weakness, it was difficult to observe and the work was controversial at the time.
In a new study published in the journal Monthly Notices from the Royal Astronomical Societyastronomers from Hungary have proved the existence of these clouds.
In search of mysterious clouds
The Lagrange points, named after the astronomer / mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange, are points of gravitation located between two celestial bodies where objects can be captured. Between the Earth and its Moon, there are five points of Lagrange – including L4 and L5, predicted by Lagrange himself in 1772. These two points of gravity form a triangle between the Earth and the Moon, moving around the planet when the natural satellite in orbit.
The cloud of dust, reported by Kordylewski in 1961, is located at L5.
In a paper submitted earlier this year, a team led by Gábor Horváth of Eötvös Loránd University created a mathematical simulation to determine how dust clouds would form and how they could be detected from Earth. They discovered that a cloud of dust, even temporary, is quite possible in the L5 layer.
The astronomers then prepared to find the cloud of dust in L5. The team headed to a private observatory in Hungary and used a linearly polarizing filtering system, attached to a camera lens and a CCD detector.
Find Kordylewski's Clouds
After months of searching, they finally found the clouds. From the images obtained from the observatory, the team found a polarized light reflected by the dust that extends far beyond the field of view of the camera lens. This is consistent with the measurements of a separate previous study conducted by a team of Russian scientists.
"Kordylewski's clouds are two of the most difficult objects to find, and although they are as close to Earth as the moon, they are largely ignored by astronomers," said Judit Slíz-Balogh. , one of the authors of the document. "It's intriguing to confirm that our planet has dusty pseudo-satellites in orbit alongside our lunar neighbor."
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