Zodiacal dust

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Categories: All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements since January 2008 | Astronomy stubs | Atmospheric optical phenomena

Zodiacal dust forms a pancake shaped cloud in the Solar System collectively known as the zodiacal cloud. It occupies the same plane as the orbit of the planets from which it derives the name zodiac. The dust particles, are between 1 to 300 micrometres in diameter. They originate from the tails of comets and from collisions between asteroids. It was discovered by German astronomer Walter Grotrian in 1934.

In August 2007, Brian May, lead guitarist with the band Queen, handed in his PhD thesis Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud 36 years after starting it and then abandoning it in favour of a musical career. That he was able to submit it was possible only because of the minimal amount of research on the topic which had been carried out in the intervening years.^{[citation needed]}