ZODIACAL
LIGHT - SCI & TECH
News: In zodiacal dust mystery, PRL Ahmedabad
study points to a familiar source
What's in the news?
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A study conducted at the Physical Research
Laboratory in Ahmedabad examined the origin of interplanetary dust responsible
for zodiacal light, focusing on Mars’ moons, Deimos and Phobos.
Zodiacal
Light:
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Zodiacal light is a faint, diffuse glow of sunlight scattered by dust particles that orbit
the sun.
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It appears in the night sky as a roughly
triangular white glow that extends from the sun’s direction and along the
zodiac.
Major
Highlights of the Study:
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Scientists at the Physical Research
Laboratory in Ahmedabad examined the data from the Juno spacecraft’s encounter
with dust particles between 1 and 5
astronomical units (AU) from the Sun.
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They found a peak in dust particle flux at
1.5 AU, suggesting a significant concentration of dust in that region.
○
‘AU’
stands for ‘astronomical unit’, which is the distance between the earth and the
Sun.
○
Mars is at a distance of 1.52 AU and
Jupiter at 5.2 AU from the Sun.
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Juno
is a spacecraft that NASA launched in 2011 to study the gas-giant Jupiter and
its moons.
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By comparing the flux of dust near Mars
and the number of particles escaping Mars’s moons, Deimos and Phobos, the
researchers concluded that these moons could be a major source of the
interplanetary dust responsible for zodiacal light.
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Mars’s
two moons are called Deimos and Phobos. Phobos is the bigger of Mars’s two
moons.
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The low gravity of Deimos and Phobos
allows smaller dust particles to easily escape into space. The smaller of these
dust particles escape into space, while the larger particles are pulled in by
Mars’s gravity, leading to the formation of a dust ring around the planet.