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Thursday, July 1, 2010

Interstellar Dust in the Solar Sytem


The pictures above show cut-aways of where interstellar dust is concentrated in the Solar System - high concentration: red/yellow, low concentration: blue/green (the planets are not shown). During solar minimum (top picture) most interstellar dust can be found above or below the Sun, while at the solar maximum (bottom picture) the dust is concentrated close to the Sun in the plane of the planets' orbits.

Image credit: ESA

Note: At this time, the top image is what current conditions should look like in our solar system as the sun is just now starting to come out of its most recent solar minimum.

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