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posted by martyb on Monday October 29 2018, @04:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L5_Society dept.

Did scientists confirm Earth's dust cloud satellites?

The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) said this week (October 25, 2018) that astronomers may now 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 clouds, first reported by and named for Polish astronomer Kazimierz 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.

If they exist, the Kordylewski clouds lie at two special points in 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 tend to move neither toward the Earth nor toward the moon. They'd tend to stay put, moving ahead of and behind the moon in orbit.

Celestial mechanics and polarization optics of the Kordylewski dust cloud in the Earth–Moon Lagrange point L5 – I. Three-dimensional celestial mechanical modelling of dust cloud formation (open, DOI: 10.1093/mnras/sty2049) (DX)

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 (open, DOI: 10.1093/mnras/sty2630) (DX)


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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 29 2018, @05:18AM (1 child)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 29 2018, @05:18AM (#754916) Journal

    We can't see them with the naked eye. Astronomy instruments haven't confirmed them in all these years, until now. To find them, you have to use polarized lenses, and you still don't actually see the clouds, you just see the effects of the polarization. So, you could drive right through them at relativistic velocities, and you MIGHT register a couple of pings - or not. Sounds almost like you could take the entire could, and compress it into something the size of a baseball.

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday October 29 2018, @05:38AM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday October 29 2018, @05:38AM (#754918) Journal

    It's not gravitationally stable, so the composition could change a lot over time.

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