At a Glance

A pair of so-called "ghost moons" have been documented orbiting Earth.These ghost moons, otherwise known as Kordylewski clouds, are large hazy clouds of dust.Discovered by Polish astronomer Kazimierz Kordylewski in 1961, his evidence was too faint to convince other scientists of their existence.It's unknown how long these clouds will stick around before dissipating.

A pair of so-called "ghost moons" have been documented orbiting our planet and they're not far from the moon we all look up and see in the night sky, according to Hungarian astronomers.

These false moons arehazy clouds of dust that span tens of thousands of miles across but were too subtle to see with the naked eyewhen Polish astronomerKazimierz Kordylewski discovered them in 1961.Kordylewski triedto convince other scientists of their existence but failed since his evidence was too faint.

However,new images published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . The clouds were documented by astronomers Gabor Horvath and Judit Sliz-Balogh of Budapest's Eötvös Loránd University using a specially fitted telescope in western Hungary some 60 years after their discovery byKordylewski.

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The newly documented ghost moons orbit the Earth at about the same distance as our actual moon — , according to NASA — with one orbiting ahead of the moon and the other standing still at a Lagrange point.

An artist's rendition of a Kordylewski cloud in the night sky. The brightness of the cloud has been enhanced.

(Royal Astronomical Society)

Lagrange points are places in space is equal to the centripetal force needed to move a small object with them, NASA defines.

“The idea here is that when you have a biggish object, like the Earth, orbited by a smaller one, like the moon, ,” astronomer Phillip Plait told NBC News MACH. “Put a much smaller object there, and it'll stay there for a long time.”

However, how much longer our ghost moons will stick around remains uncertain. While Kordylewski first came across the celestial clouds back in the 1960s, researchers believe they could dissipate in a few years.