Researchers detect ‘ghost light’ in the solar system

A team of researchers led by Arizona State University (ASU) discovered that there Mysterious glow of light give this He explained the absence of previously known objects Maybe. They came to this conclusion after analyzing 200,000 images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of the Hubble Space Telescope The Skysurf Project.

Ten fireflies in the sky

The research team has all known light sources on the images, such as stars, galaxies, and light reflected from planets, moons, and dust in the plane of planetary orbits (zodiac light) added one little excess Found in the actual recordings.

How small is the excess? Phys.org describes Like this: like the light from 10 fireflies split across the entire sky. You can also imagine standing in a completely dark room, but from the ceiling and walls of room A”eerie glow” Come.

Perhaps the culprit remains

However, this overshoot is present and cannot be explained. It is distributed spherically in the solar system and shows amazing regularity. One hypothesis is that it is Light is reflected off tiny particles of ice and dust Actions of comets On their way to the sun.

Compared to images taken from New Horizons

This “ghost light” is also found in images other than those from Hubble, such as the NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. It flew past the dwarf planet Pluto in 2015 and is now on its way to interstellar space. In contrast to the interplanetary space, there is very little dust there.

The extra light in the New Horizons images is less than that in the Hubble images. This indicates that “ghost light” is a local phenomenon in or around the solar system. “Maybe A new element in the solar system ASU’s Tim Carlton said: