2010/04/30 by Kohji Tsumura, K. Tsumura, J. Battle +23 · 55 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Albedo (alchemy) #Asteroid #Astro and Planetary Science #Astrobiology #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Brightness #Ecliptic #Extragalactic background light #Galaxy #Infrared #Interplanetary dust cloud #Physics #Planetary Science and Exploration #Redshift #Solar System #Solar wind #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #Zodiacal light #astro-ph.EP
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0004-637x/719/1/394
published in The Astrophysical Journal 719(1), 394-402 (IOP Publishing) · 9 pages, 11 figures
openalex publication_date 2010/07/20 · arxiv created 2010/07/22 · arxiv updated 2015/05/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Interplanetary dust (IPD) scatters solar radiation which results in the zodiacal light that dominates the celestial diffuse brightness at optical and near-infrared wavelengths.Both asteroid collisions and cometary ejections produce the IPD, but the relative contribution from these two sources is still unknown.The low resolution spectrometer (LRS) onboard the Cosmic Infrared Background ExpeRiment (CIBER) observed the astrophysical sky spectrum between 0.75 and 2.1 μm over a wide range of ecliptic latitude.The resulting zodiacal light spectrum is redder than the solar spectrum, and shows a broad absorption feature, previously unreported, at approximately 0.9 μm, suggesting the existence of silicates in the IPD material.The spectral shape of the zodiacal light is isotropic at all ecliptic latitudes within the measurement error.The zodiacal light spectrum, including the extended wavelength range to 2.5 μm using Infrared Telescope in Space (IRTS) data, is qualitatively similar to the reflectance of S-type asteroids.This result can be explained by the proximity of S-type asteroidal dust to Earth's orbit, and the relatively high albedo of asteroidal dust compared with cometary dust.