Hubble Space Telescope’s Image Leaves Scientists Wondering

Photo Credit: NASA, ESA, Andi James (STScI)

Scientists using Hubble Space Telescope’s data have found something strange -- a “ghostly light” around our solar system. When light from stars, planets, and starlight scattered due to dust is found, there’s some more light that's observed and researchers are trying to understand its origin.

The scientists investigated 200,000 Hubble images in a project known as SKYSURF, to find the excess light beyond that coming from the sources already known. They did manage to find a faint glow that hints at a previously unknown structure in our solar system.

A Sphere Of Dust

As per a suggestion, our solar system could be surrounded by a sphere of dust that reflects sunlight and produces a glow. The idea is backed by NASA’s New Horizon mission, which flew past Pluto in 2015 and is currently on its way toward interstellar space.

As the spacecraft flew past these planets in our solar system and beyond, it managed to find a faint glow of background light, though this glow wasn’t as evident as it is in the recently observed glow.

“If our analysis is correct there’s another dust component between us and the distance where New Horizons made measurements. That means this is some kind of extra light coming from inside our solar system,” said researcher Tim Carleton of Arizona State University.

“Because our measurement of residual light is higher than New Horizons we think it is a local phenomenon that is not from far outside the solar system. It may be a new element to the contents of the solar system that has been hypothesized but not quantitatively measured until now.”

What Caused The Sphere Of Dust?

The source of this hypothetical dust cloud is said to be comets. The space rocks move through the solar system from all sides, and as they reach closer to the Sun they heat up and spew dust and ice particles.

This could explain the reason behind the sphere of dust, which has gone unnoticed until now because it required very large amounts of images from a highly sophisticated tool such as the Hubble Space telescope. The space observatory has been capturing highly detailed images of the cosmos for over three decades.

The research has been published in three papers in The Astronomical Journal and The Astrophysical Journal Letters.