Sie sind auf Seite 1von 5

Zodiacal light - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

12/21/15, 13:17

Zodiacal light
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Zodiacal light is a faint, roughly triangular, diffuse white glow seen in the night
sky that appears to extend up from the vicinity of the Sun along the ecliptic or
zodiac.[1] It is best seen just after sunset in spring, and just before sunrise in
autumn, when the zodiac is at a steep angle to the horizon. Caused by sunlight
scattered by space dust in the zodiacal cloud, it is so faint that either moonlight
or light pollution renders it invisible.
The zodiacal light decreases in intensity with distance from the Sun, but on very
dark nights it has been observed in a band completely around the ecliptic. In
fact, the zodiacal light covers the entire sky, being responsible in large part[2] for
the total skylight on a moonless night. Another phenomenona faint, but
slightly increased, oval glow directly opposite the Sunis called the
gegenschein.
The dust forms a thick pancake-shaped cloud in the Solar System collectively
known as the zodiacal cloud, which occupies the same plane as the ecliptic. The
dust particles are between 10 and 300 micrometres in diameter, most with mass

Zodiacal light in the eastern


sky before the beginning of
morning twilight

around 150 micrograms.[3]

Contents
1 Viewing
2 Origin
3 Appearance
4 Cultural significance
4.1 Importance to Islam
4.2 Brian May
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiacal_light

Page 1 of 5

Zodiacal light - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

12/21/15, 13:17

Viewing

Zodiacal light seen with a green and


red Orionid meteor striking the sky
below the Milky Way and to the right
of Venus

In the mid-latitudes, the zodiacal light is best observed in the western


sky in the spring after the evening twilight has completely disappeared,
or in the eastern sky in the autumn just before the morning twilight
appears. The zodiacal light appears as a column, brighter at the horizon,
tilted at the angle of the ecliptic. Since the light scattered from extremely
small dust particles is strongly forward scattering, although the zodiacal
light actually extends all the way around the sky, it is brightest when
observing at a small angle with the sun. This is why it is most clearly
visible near sunrise or sunset, when the sun is blocked, but the dust
particles nearest the line of sight to the sun are not. The dust band that
causes the zodiacal light is uniform across the whole ecliptic.

The dust further from the ecliptic is almost undetectable except when
viewed at a small angle with the sun. Thus it is possible to see more of
the width at small angles toward the sun, and it appears wider near the horizon, closer to the sun under the
horizon.

Origin
The source of the dust has been long debated. Until recently, it was
thought that the dust originated from the tails of active comets and from
collisions between asteroids in the asteroid belt.[5] Peter Jenniskens had
previously recognized that many of our meteor showers have no known
active comet parent bodies. In a 2010 article in the Astrophysical
Journal, David Nesvorny and Peter Jenniskens attributed over 85 percent
of the dust to occasional fragmentations of Jupiter-family comets that
are nearly dormant.[6] Jupiter-family comets have orbital periods of less
than 20 years[7] and are considered dormant when not actively

Moonlight and zodiacal light over La


[4]

Silla Observatory.
outgassing, but may do so in the future.[8] Nesvorny and Jenniskens' first
fully dynamical model of the zodiacal cloud demonstrated that only if
the dust was released in orbits that approach Jupiter, is it stirred up enough to explain the thickness of the
zodiacal dust cloud. The dust in meteoroid streams is much larger, 300 to 10,000 micrometres in diameter, and
falls apart in smaller zodiacal dust grains over time.

The PoyntingRobertson effect forces the dust into more circular (but still elongated) orbits, while spiralling
slowly into the Sun. Hence a continuous source of new particles is needed to maintain the zodiacal cloud.
Cometary dust and dust generated by collisions among the asteroids are believed to be mostly responsible for
the maintenance of the dust cloud producing the zodiacal light and the gegenschein.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiacal_light

Page 2 of 5

Zodiacal light - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

12/21/15, 13:17

Particles can be reduced in size by collisions or by space weathering. When ground down to sizes less than 10
micrometres, the grains are removed from the inner Solar System by solar radiation pressure. The dust is then
replenished by the infall from comets. Zodiacal dust around nearby stars is called exozodiacal dust; it is a
potentially important source of noise for directly imaging extrasolar planets. Nesvorny and Jenniskens have
pointed out that this exozodiacal dust, or hot debris disks, can also help find planets, as planets tend to scatter
the comets to the inner Solar System.
In 2015, new results published in the magazine "Nature" using the
secondary ion dust spectrometer COSIMA on board the ESA/Rosetta
orbiter confirmed that the parent bodies of interplanetary dust are most
probably Jupiter-family comets such as comet 67P/ChuryumovGerasimenko.[10]

Appearance
Zodiacal light is produced by sunlight
reflecting off dust particles in the solar
system known as cosmic dust.
Consequently, its spectrum is the same as
the solar spectrum. The material
producing the zodiacal light is located in
a lens-shaped volume of space centered
on the sun and extending well out
beyond the orbit of Earth. This material
Colorful center of the Milky Way and
is known as the interplanetary dust
the zodiacal light above the Very
cloud. Since most of the material is
Large Telescope.[9]
located near the plane of the Solar
System, the zodiacal light is seen along
the ecliptic. The amount of material needed to produce the observed zodiacal
light is quite small. If it were in the form of 1 mm particles, each with the same
albedo (reflecting power) as Earth's moon, each particle would be 8 km from its
neighbors. The gegenschein may be because particles directly opposite the sun
as seen from Earth would be in full phase.

Zodiacal light seen from


Paranal

According to Nesvorny and Jenniskens, when the dust grains are as small as
about 150 micrometres in size, they will hit the Earth at an average speed of
14.5 km/s, many as slowly as 12 km/s. If so, they pointed out, this comet dust can survive entry in partially
molten form, accounting for the unusual attributes of the micrometeorites collected in Antarctica, which do not
resemble the larger meteorites known to originate from asteroids. In recent years, observations by a variety of
spacecraft have shown significant structure in the zodiacal light including dust bands associated with debris
from particular asteroid families and several cometary trails.

Cultural significance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiacal_light

Page 3 of 5

Zodiacal light - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

12/21/15, 13:17

The glow of the zodiacal light was perhaps first reported in print by Joshua Childrey in 1661. The phenomenon
was investigated by the astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini in 1683. According to some sources, he
explained it by dust particles around the Sun.[11][12] Other sources state that it was first explained this way by
Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, in 1684.[13]

Importance to Islam
The Islamic prophet Muhammed described zodiacal light in reference to the timing of the five daily prayers,
calling it the "false dawn" ( al-fajr al-kdhib). Muslim oral tradition preserves numerous sayings, or
hadith, in which Muhammed describes the difference between the light of false dawn, appearing in the sky long
after sunset, and the light of the first band of horizontal light at sunrise, the true dawn. Practitioners of Islam use
Muhammed's descriptions of zodiacal light to avoid errors in determining the timing of daily prayers. Such
practical descriptions and applications of astronomical observations were vital to the golden age of Islamic
astronomy.
Use of the term "false dawn" in this context should not be confused with false sunrise, which is a different,
unrelated optical phenomenon.

Brian May
In 2007, Brian May, lead guitarist with the band Queen, completed his PhD thesis A Survey of Radial Velocities
in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud 36 years after having started and abandoning it to pursue a career in music. He was
able to submit it only because of the minimal amount of research on the topic undertaken during the intervening
years. May describes the subject as being one that became "trendy" again in the 2000s.[14]

See also
Exozodiacal dust
Gegenschein
Interplanetary dust cloud
Islamic astronomy
Optical phenomenon
Kordylewski cloud

References
1. Internet Encyclopedia of Science (http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/Z/zodiacal_cloud.html) Accessed April
2010
2. Reach, W. T. (1997). "The structured zodiacal light: IRAS, COBE, and ISO observations", page 1 (in Introduction)
(http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1997ASPC..124...33R&db_key=AST)
3. Peucker-Ehrenbrink, Bernhard; Schmitz, Birger (2001). Accretion of extraterrestrial matter throughout earth's history.
Springer. pp. 6667. ISBN 0-306-46689-9.
4. "Moonlight and Zodiacal Light Over La Silla". ESO Picture of the Week. Retrieved 21 July 2013.
5. Espy, Ashley J.; Dermott, S.; Kehoe, T. J. (September 2006). "Towards a Global Model of the Zodiacal Cloud". Bulletin
of the American Astronomical Society 38: 557. Bibcode:2006DPS....38.4101E.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiacal_light

Page 4 of 5

Zodiacal light - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

12/21/15, 13:17

of the American Astronomical Society 38: 557. Bibcode:2006DPS....38.4101E.


6. "Cometary Origin of the Zodiacal Cloud and Carbonaceous Micrometeorites. Implications for hot debris disks".
Astrophysical Journal 713. April 20, 2010. Retrieved 2010-04-20.
7. Jenniskens, Petrus Matheus Marie (2006). Meteor showers and their parent comets. Cambridge University Press. p. 108.
ISBN 978-0-521-85349-1.
8. SPACE.com Staff (6 January 2011). "Comet or Asteroid? Big Space Rock Has Identity Crisis". SPACE.com. Retrieved
23 May 2011. "Dormant comets retain some subsurface volatiles and may start outgassing once again as they near the
sun."
9. "Romantic Sunset over the VLT". www.eso.org. European Southern Observatory. Retrieved 21 April 2015.
10. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nature14159.html
11. Petrus Matheus Marie Jenniskens (14 September 2006). Meteor Showers and Their Parent Comets. Cambridge
University Press. p. 531. ISBN 978-0-521-85349-1.
12. Bernard Grun (9 August 2001). Interplanetary Dust. Springer. p. 58. ISBN 978-3-540-42067-5.
13. Steven J. Dick (31 August 2013). Discovery and Classification in Astronomy: Controversy and Consensus. Cambridge
University Press. p. 350. ISBN 978-1-107-03361-0.
14. Terri Gross interviews Brian May, "National Public Radio show (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?
storyId=128935865) Fresh Air"

External links
Reach, W. T. (1997). "The structured zodiacal light: IRAS, COBE,
Wikimedia Commons has
and ISO observations" (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nphmedia related to Zodiacal
bib_query?bibcode=1997ASPC..124...33R&db_key=AST).
light.
Diffuse Infrared Radiation and the IRTS. ASP Conference Series.
124, 3340
A Brief History of Observations (http://zodiacal-light.hit.bg/zl_files/observations_text.html)
"Zodiacal Light and the Gegenschein", an essay by J. E. Littleton
(http://www.as.wvu.edu/~jel/skywatch/skw9810h.html)
Zodiacal Light and the False Dawn (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070925.html) September 25,
2007
Zodiacal Light Over Laguna Verde (http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap091029.html) October 29, 2009
Zodiacal light as seen from above the Himalayan Hills in Uttarakhand, India
(http://www.twanight.org/newTWAN/photos.asp?ID=3002008)
Examples of zodiacal light descriptions in Islamic tradition, and their application
(http://islamqa.com/index.php?ref=26763&ln=eng&txt=false%20fajr)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Zodiacal_light&oldid=691312397"
Categories: Solar System Light sources Observational astronomy
This page was last modified on 19 November 2015, at 00:57.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may
apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia is a registered
trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiacal_light

Page 5 of 5

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen