Zodiacal Light

Anny Chantal Levasseur-Regourd (1)

1 PLANETO - LATMOS

The zodiacal light is a faint veil of light covering the Earth’s sky. Brighter towards the Sun and the ecliptic, it originates in solar light scattered by a cloud of dust particles, mostly of cometary and asteroidal origin. The increase of brightness, toward the Sun and the near-ecliptic region, indicates an increase in the space density of the interplanetary dust cloud, which has a lenticular shape around the Sun; a slight brightness enhancement toward the antisolar region (gegenschein) corresponds to a backscattering effect. Thermal emission from the zodiacal particles forms, away from the galactic plane, the most prominent component in the near-infrared sky.

Keywords: Asteroidal dust; Cometary dust; Dust debris; Exo-zodiacal clouds; Gegenschein; IDPs; Meteors; Zodiacal cloud

Domains: Solar and Stellar Astrophysics [astro-ph.SR]

Anny Chantal Levasseur-Regourd. Zodiacal Light. Ricardo Amils, Muriel Gargaud, José Cernicharo Quintanilla, Henderson James Cleaves, William M. Irvine, Daniele Pinti, Michel Viso. Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 7 p., 2015, ISBN : 978-3-642-27833-4. ⟨10.1007/978-3-642-27833-4_1706-2⟩. ⟨insu-01161447⟩