Abstract
The effectiveness of the gravitational attraction of the earth in increasing the near-earth dust concentration over its interplanetary value is reassessed in this paper. We find that this increase is a maximum for particles entering the earth's sphere of influence with a speed of about 0.1 km/sec. The corresponding near-earth enhancement is of the order of 102 and reaches this maximum at an altitude of about 0.5 earth radii. However, for a realistic distribution of dust-particle speeds at the boundary of the earth's sphere of influence, the enhancement is negligible. In addition to considering purely gravitational focusing, we have also analyzed the restricted three-body problem, including sunlight pressure. The results indicate that the Jacobi capture of dust particles into temporary geocentric orbits is so rare that its effect on the near-earth dust concentration may be neglected.
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