The ‘ghostly glow’ in the solar system could be a ‘new addition’ to our understanding of its structure

A mysterious “ghostly glow” equivalent to 10 fireflies has been found around us solar system which persists even when other light sources such as stars and planets are subtracted.

The discovery was made when astronomers set out to see what dark space might look like, which they did by examining 200,000 images captured by NASAfrom the Hubble Space Telescope and eliminating the expected glow, but a small excess of light prevailed.

Scientists can’t be sure where the light came from, but they hypothesize the source she is previously unknown sphere formed by comet dust, which reflects sunlight.

If confirmed, the researchers said this dust shell would be a new addition to the known architecture of the solar system.

This discovery builds on research done in 2021 when another group of astronomers used data from NASA’s New Horizons interplanetary space probe to measure the sky background.

New Horizon also spotted a glow around the solar system, but the probe was more than four billion miles from the sun, and what caused it remains a mystery to this day.

Numerous theories range from the decay of dark matter to a huge invisible population of distant galaxies.

Tim Carleton of Arizona State University (ASU) said in one statement: “If our analysis is correct, there is another component of dust between us and the distance where New Horizons made measurements.

“That means it’s some kind of extra light coming from the interior of our solar system.”

Carleton went on to explain that because the light appeared faint in the New Horizons data because of its distance, the glow must have come from within the boundaries of the solar system.

“It may be a new element to the content of the solar system that has been hypothesized but not quantitatively measured so far,” he said.

This led recent work to use Hubble, which is about 340 miles above Earth’s surface.

Veteran Hubble astronomer Rogier Windhorst, also of ASU, said in a statement: “More than 95 percent of the photons in the images in the Hubble archive come from distances less than 3 billion miles from Earth .

“Since the early days of Hubble, most Hubble users have dismissed these photons from the sky as they are interested in the faint discrete objects in Hubble images, such as stars and galaxies.

“But these sky photons contain important information that can be extracted thanks to Hubble’s unique ability to measure faint brightness levels with high precision over its three-decade lifetime.”

Hubble, a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, has been observing the universe for more than three decades.

More than 1.5 million observations of the universe have been made and more than 18,000 scientific papers have been published based on their data.

The telescope orbits the Earth at a speed of about 17,000 mph in low Earth orbit at an altitude of about 340 miles, slightly higher than the International Space Station.

Launched in April 1990 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Hubble is increasingly showing signs of aging, despite a series of repairs and upgrades carried out by space astronauts during NASA’s shuttle era.

The telescope is named after the famous astronomer Edwin Hubble who was born in Missouri in 1889 and discovered that the universe is expanding, as well as the rate at which it is expanding.