Context: In a study published by the Royal Astronomical Society, points out that the likely source of the mysterious zodiacal dust has been identified, and it has martian origin.
Zodiacal light:
- Zodiacal light is the faint glow visible on completely dark nights from Earth. It is due to the sunlight scattered by interplanetary dust (Zodiacal dust).
- Zodiacal light is present across the entire path of the ecliptic, which is the path along which the Sun moves in the sky over the course of a year.
Major Highlights of the study:
- 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. 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.
- Juno is a spacecraft that NASA launched in 2011 to study the gas-giant Jupiter and its moons.
- 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.
- Mars’s two moons are called Deimos and Phobos. Phobos is the bigger of Mars’s two moons.
- 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.