NASA Captures 'Ghost Light' That's Catching Us

The ghost of light is like a thick, dim shell that surrounds the entire Solar System, invisible to older telescopes but looming large in Hubble's divine eye.

Searching through a trove of more than 200,000 images captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and taking tens of thousands of measurements, scientists have identified something startling: A ghostly membrane of light, perhaps like a bubble, is engulfing the entire Solar System.

According to SciTech Daily, it's a faint, ghostly glow — just like when you walk into a dark room and see the walls glowing faintly.

The "ghost of light" surrounding the Solar System may be a thick shell of dust - (Photo: NASA/ESA/STScI).

The study, conducted by a team of scientists led by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates several NASA space telescope missions including the Hubble, James Webb, and Nancy Grace Roman telescopes, concluded that it could be a dusty shell that covers the Solar System and is so thick that it extends all the way to Pluto.

The light in this layer is very smoothly distributed and common light sources such as other stars, galaxies, planets, etc. have been eliminated. This leads to an interesting source: Emissions from icy comets are freely flying in these regions, partially sublimated by the heat from the Sun.

The amount of light is so low that NASA describes it as being like looking at 10 fireflies shining all across the sky.

Scientists are working to confirm the hypothesis. If confirmed, this dust shell would be an interesting addition to the model of the Solar System.

This idea was reinforced by a discovery in 2021 by New Horizons, NASA's Pluto probe, which, after completing its initial mission, continued on its way and detected a faint, ghostly glow as it looked into interstellar space ahead.

Studies on this "ghost light" have just been published in two scientific journals, The Astronomical Journal and The Astrophysical Journal Letters.