High-resolution Imaging of the Gegenschein and the Geometric Albedo of Interplanetary Dust

TL;DR

This study used high-resolution optical imaging to analyze the Gegenschein, revealing a narrow backscattering enhancement and estimating the interplanetary dust's geometric albedo, supporting the dominance of chondritic particles near Earth.

Contribution

It provides detailed high-resolution imaging of the Gegenschein and estimates the geometric albedo of interplanetary dust, highlighting the role of large particles and backscattering effects.

Findings

Narrow brightness enhancement at the antisolar point.

Geometric albedo of interplanetary dust is 0.06.

Big particles dominate zodiacal light and emission.

Abstract

We made optical observations of the Gegenschein using a liquid-nitrogen-cooled wide-field camera, Wide-field Imager of Zodiacal light with ARray Detector (WIZARD), between March 2003 and November 2006. We found a narrow brightness enhancement superimposed on the smooth gradient of the Gegenschein at the exact position of the antisolar point. Whereas the Gegenschein morphology changed according to the orbital motion of the Earth, the maximum brightness coincided with the antisolar direction throughout the year. We compared the observed morphology of the Gegenschein with those of models in which the spatial density of the interplanetary dust cloud was considered and found that the volume scattering phase function had a narrow backscattering enhancement. The morphology was reproducible with a spatial distribution model for infrared zodiacal emission. It is likely that the zero-phase peak (the so-called opposition effect) was caused by coherent backscattering and/or shadow-hiding effects on the rough surfaces of individual dust particles. These results suggest that big particles are responsible for both zodiacal light and zodiacal emission. Finally, we derived the geometric albedo of the smooth component of interplanetary dust, assuming big particles, and obtained a geometric albedo of 0.06+-0.01. The derived albedo is in accordance with collected dark micrometeorites and observed cometary dust particles. We concluded that chondritic particles are dominant near Earth space, supporting the recent theoretical study by dynamical simulation.