Discovery and Observation
The existence of a photometrically confirmable concentration of dust at the libration points was predicted by Professor J. Witkowski in 1951.
The clouds were first seen by Kordylewski in 1956. Between 6 March and 6 April, 1961 he succeeded in photographing two bright patches near the L5 libration point. During the observation time the patches hardly appeared to move relative to L5. The observations were taken from the mountain Kasprowy Wierch.
In 1967, J. Wesley Simpson made observations of the clouds using the Kuiper Airborne Observatory.
The existence of the Kordylewski clouds is still under dispute. The Japanese Hiten space probe, which passed through the libration points to detect trapped dust particles, did not find an obvious increase in dust levels above the density in surrounding space.
Read more about this topic: Kordylewski Cloud
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