Earth's Ghost Moons
A Polish astronomer said he had seen two faint clouds of dust orbiting with the Earth and the Moon. For decades, no one could find them.
What was reported
There are two points in the Moon's orbit, called L4 and L5, where the pull of Earth and Moon balances, so that dust or rocks could gather there. In 1961 the Polish astronomer Kazimierz Kordylewski reported seeing very faint glowing patches at those points, like ghostly moons.
Other astronomers looked and saw nothing, and the 'Kordylewski clouds' became a half-forgotten curiosity. In 2018, a Hungarian team using polarising filters reported that they had detected them, as vast thin clouds of dust.
Explanations offered
Clouds like these are possible, but they would be extremely faint, shifting with the pull of the Sun, and easy to confuse with other light in the sky. The 2018 results are taken seriously but haven't been confirmed independently.
- When
- Reported in 1961, again in 2018
- Where
- Between Earth and the Moon, first seen from Kraków, Poland
- Witnesses
- Astronomers in Poland and Hungary
- Status
- Disputed
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.