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arXiv · 1904.12404

Co-orbital Asteroids as the Source of Venus's Zodiacal Dust Ring

Petr Pokorný·Marc J. Kuchner
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Abstract

Photometry from the Helios and STEREO spacecraft revealed regions of enhanced sky surface-brightness suggesting a narrow circumsolar ring of dust associated with Venus's orbit. We model this phenomenon by integrating the orbits of 10,000,000+ dust particles subject to gravitational and non-gravitational forces, considering several different kinds of plausible dust sources. We find that only particles from a hypothetical population of Venus co-orbital asteroids can produce enough signal in a narrow ring to match the observations. Previous works had suggested such objects would be dynamically unstable. However, we re-examined the stability of asteroids in 1:1 resonance with Venus and found that ~8% should survive for the age of the solar system, enough to supply the observed ring.

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Petr Pokorný, Marc J. Kuchner. 2019-04-29. Co-orbital Asteroids as the Source of Venus's Zodiacal Dust Ring. https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ab0827

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