Seasonal Variations of the Zodiacal Light toward the Ecliptic Poles at the Infrared Wavelengths

  • Published : 2016.04.12

Abstract

The zodiacal light (ZL), combination of the sunlight scattered by and the infrared light emitted by the interplanetary dust (IPD) particles, changes with time due to the asymmetric distribution of the particles with respect to the Earth's orbit. Especially, the variation of the ZL brightness toward the ecliptic poles are useful to probe the properties of the global distribution of the IPD because we can evade the effect of the small scale structures, such as the asteroidal dust bands. The ecliptic poles are frequently visited by the infrared (IR) space telescopes owing to their sun-synchronous orbits or for specific purposes. We collect and analyze the observations toward the ecliptic poles by COBE/DIRBE, AKARI, and MIRIS, covering the wavelengths from about 1 to $25{\mu}m$. The observed seasonal variations of the ZL are modeled with a simple IPD cloud model to derive cloud parameters. The parameters are compared with those of the empirical cloud models by Kelsall et al. (1998) and Kondo et al. (2016), and the discrepancies are discussed.

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