Exozodiacal dust.
If we break this word down, exo means external.
And zodiacal, similar to the word zodiac,
means the portion of the sky through which the Sun and the planets move.
Put these two compounds together and you get exozodiacal dust.
But what does this mean?
Exozodiacal dust is the dust around stars
produced mainly by colliding asteroids or passing comets.
We can see these same tiny grains in our solar system, too.
The dust reflects sunlight,
so we can often see it in pictures taken at dawn or dusk.
This is an illustration of exozodiacal dust.
So why look at exozodiacal dust, the dust outside of our solar system?
Distribution patterns of space dust can offer clues about planets
orbiting other stars, and the amount of dust in a star system
can inform scientists about the frequency of comet activity.
NASA's Roman telescope, launching in the next few years,
will study the chemistry of exozodiacal dust to better understand how
rocky planets form.