# Co-orbital Asteroids as the Source of Venus's Zodiacal Dust Ring

## TL;DR

This study models the origin of Venus's zodiacal dust ring, concluding that co-orbital asteroids are a plausible source, with a significant fraction surviving over the solar system's age.

## Contribution

It demonstrates that Venus co-orbital asteroids can produce the observed dust ring, challenging previous assumptions about their instability.

## Key findings

- Co-orbital asteroids can sustain the dust ring around Venus.
- Approximately 8% of such asteroids are stable over the solar system's lifetime.
- The dust from these asteroids matches observed brightness levels.

## Abstract

Photometry from the Helios and STEREO spacecraft revealed regions of enhanced sky surface-brightness suggesting a narrow circumsolar ring of dust associated with Venus's orbit. We model this phenomenon by integrating the orbits of 10,000,000+ dust particles subject to gravitational and non-gravitational forces, considering several different kinds of plausible dust sources. We find that only particles from a hypothetical population of Venus co-orbital asteroids can produce enough signal in a narrow ring to match the observations. Previous works had suggested such objects would be dynamically unstable. However, we re-examined the stability of asteroids in 1:1 resonance with Venus and found that ~8% should survive for the age of the solar system, enough to supply the observed ring.