Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday
on Twitter Most of us have experienced the frustration of
pollution, fog, or clouds turning a night of stargazing into an
exercise in frustration. Turns out, NASA has been dealing with
the same problems since it started launching large telescopes.
Even in orbit, telescopes can’t see too well through the dust
that litters the inner Solar System. But a team of NASA
scientists have come up with a way to lift astronomy out of this
cosmic fog. Venus, Earth, and Mars all orbit within a dust cloud
made by comets and occasional collisions between asteroids. This
so-called zodiacal cloud is the Solar System’s most luminous
feature after the Sun and can be up to a thousand times brighter
than the objects astronomers are actually targeting. The light
affects orbital observations the same way light from a full Moon
affects ground based observations. The zodiacal cloud is so
bright that it has interfered with every infrared, optical, and
ultraviolet astronom