--- title: "Scientists Stumped by “Ghostly Glow” Surrounding Our Solar System" description: "67" date: "2022-12-11" modified: "2022-12-11" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/ghostly-glow-solar-system" categories: - "Energy" - "Off-World" - "Renewable Energy" - "Science & Energy" - "Solar Power" - "Space" tags: - "hubble space telescope" - "solar system" - "the digest" --- # Scientists Stumped by “Ghostly Glow” Surrounding Our Solar System ![After examining over 200,000 images taken by Hubble, a faint excess of light spread across our sky has been detected by astronomers.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* ## Glow Up Someone forgot to turn the lights out. Astronomers have detected a residual "ghostly glow," tainting the near pitch blackness of the sky, after painstakingly analyzing 200,000 images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Their calculations, part of an ongoing project called SKYSURF and newly described in a [series]() [of]() [papers]() in *The Astronomical Journal* and *The Astronomical Journal Letters*, accounts for the well-documented zodiacal light emanating from planets, stars, galaxies, and interplanetary dust — and they're certain the glow doesn't originate from these sources. The residual background glow itself is *extremely* faint — NASA [describes]() it as the equivalent to spreading the light of ten fireflies across the entire sky — but it's there nonetheless, uniformly pervading the near pitch blackness of space. In other words, it's a genuine anomaly — and that has scientists intrigued. ## Rusakov Field The most likely candidate, according to the astronomers, might be an entire spherical structure of dust lurking in our solar system previously unaccounted for, derived from comets falling into the system's interior. Sunlight reflecting off the dust would then cause it to glow. In 2021, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft also detected a similar excess of even fainter and still unexplained light, but that glow appeared to originate from a more distant source. "If our analysis is correct there's another dust component between us and the distance where New Horizons made measurements," explained Tim Carleton, an astronomer from Arizona State University (ASU), in a NASA [statement](). "That means this is some kind of extra light coming from inside our solar system," he added. "It may be a new element to the contents of the solar system that has been hypothesized but not quantitatively measured until now." ## Starshot Detecting the glow couldn't have been done without the industrious and faithful Hubble, according to ASU astronomer Rogier Windhorst, a veteran user of the space telescope. Windhorst says that photons of light in the sky often have quite literally been overlooked since most astronomers are attempting to observe distant objects. "But these sky-photons contain important information which can be extracted thanks to Hubble's unique ability to measure faint brightness levels to high precision over its three decades of lifetime," Windhorst explained in the statement. The James Webb might be [stealing its thunder]() these days, but you can never count the Hubble out. With the curious glow now revealed, perhaps other telescopes and observatories will soon join in on the mystery to uncover the origins of this cosmic night light. **More on Hubble observations:** *[NASA Releases Hubble Images of Star Right as It Explodes]()* ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()