A new analysis of Hubble data has solved the problem: there is a lot of light in the space around the solar system.
Not much extra light, sure. Just the ethereal phantom glow, the faint excess that couldn’t be accounted for in the census of all light-emitting creatures.
All the stars and galaxies surrounding the solar system — and zodiacal light, also known as solar system-wide dust — none of which can explain what astronomers today call “ghost light.”
After analyzing 200,000 Hubble images and taking thousands of measurements in a project called skysurfinternational collaboration confirms excess light is real.
Also, they couldn’t fully explain it. There is a possibility, but nothing has been confirmed. Not now anyway.
Strongest possibility? A dusty feature in the solar system that we haven’t directly detected: tiny particles of dust and ice from a comet cluster drifting inward from the dark parts of the solar system, reflecting sunlight and producing a diffuse global glow.
This source will be a little closer to us than The extra light was detected by the New Horizons space probewhich found an excess of light in Pluto’s outer space, outside the solar system.
“If our analysis is correct, then there is another dust element between us and the distance New Horizons is measuring. That is, it is some kind of additional light coming from inside our solar system,” she said. says astronomer Tim Carlton from Arizona State University.
“Because our residual light dimension is greater than New Horizons, we believe this is a local phenomenon not far from the solar system. It could be a hypothesized but not yet quantitatively quantified component of the contents of the new solar system”.
There are many bright objects floating around in the universe: planets, stars, galaxies, and even gas and dust. And in general, bright things are things we want to see. So detecting ambient light in interstitial space — interplanetary, interstellar, and intergalactic space — is a challenge.
However, when we look, we sometimes find that things are not as we expected.
For example, something we can’t explain is being produced at the center of the galaxy High power light. Voyager found an increase in brightness associated with hydrogen on the edge of the solar system. Discover new horizons. You see strange things shining there.
The goal of SKYSURF is to fully characterize the brightness of the sky.
“More than 95 percent of the photons in the Hubble archive images come from less than 3 billion miles from Earth. Since Hubble’s inception, most Hubble users have ignored these celestial photons, because they are attracted to faint discrete objects in Hubble images, such as stars and galaxies. “,” said astronomer and Hubble veteran Roger Windhorst from Arizona State University.
“But these celestial photons contain important information that can be gleaned thanks to Hubble’s unique ability to measure low-light with high precision over its three decades of life.”
In three separate papers, the researchers searched the Hubble archives for signs of dark galaxies that may be missing and determined what light should be emitted by objects known to shine.
The team searching for hidden galaxies determined that not enough galaxies were lost to explain the extra light.
The resulting excess, scientists say, is equivalent to the constant emission of 10 fireflies into the sky.
That may not sound like much, but it’s enough to know that we’re missing out. This is important. More and more, scientists are finding ways to see the light between the stars. If there is local overload, we need to know about it, as it could distort our understanding of distant ghostglows.
And, of course, it could impact our understanding of the solar system and how it’s made up.
“When we look at the night sky, we can learn a lot about the Earth’s atmosphere. Hubble is in space.” said astronomer Rosalia O’Brien from Arizona State University.
“When we look at the sky that night, we can learn a lot about what’s happening within our galaxy and solar system and on a large scale like the entire universe.”
Three Skysurf articles published in Journal of Astronomy And Astrophysics journal letterand can be found hereAnd hereAnd here. The fourth document is submitted to Journal of Astronomy Unpublished, it can be found Prepress server arXiv.
