Goddard Glossary: Exozodiacal Dust

Narration: Jacqueline Zito

Transcript:

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Exozodiacal dust.

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If we break this word

down, exo means external.

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And zodiacal, similar to the word zodiac,

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means the portion of the sky through

which the Sun and the planets move.

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Put these two compounds together

and you get exozodiacal dust.

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But what does this mean?

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Exozodiacal dust is the dust around stars

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produced mainly by colliding asteroids

or passing comets.

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We can see these same tiny grains

in our solar system, too.

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The dust reflects sunlight,

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so we can often see it in pictures

taken at dawn or dusk.

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This is an illustration

of exozodiacal dust.

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So why look at exozodiacal dust,

the dust outside of our solar system?

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Distribution patterns of space dust

can offer clues about planets

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orbiting other stars,

and the amount of dust in a star system

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can inform scientists

about the frequency of comet activity.

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NASA's Roman telescope,

launching in the next few years,

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will study the chemistry of exozodiacal

dust to better understand how

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rocky planets form.