Placing New Observational Constraints on the Structure of the Zodiacal Dust with the Spitzer/IRAC Shutter

There are significant uncertainties associated with our understanding of the dust distribution in the zodiacal dust cloud (zody). Results from COBE, Spitzer/NEP and Akari seem to be in conflict with each other with the latter two arguing for a more compact zodiacal cloud with higher intensity at high ecliptic latitudes and a temporally varying local dust overdensity. Observations with the Spitzer/IRAC shutter during the final hours of the mission from a vantage point outside the local dust overdensity, in conjunction with Palomar/Doublespec Fraunhofer line spectroscopy, provides a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reduce the uncertainty between the different zodiacal dust models. The observations will constrain the zodiacal light models which in turn will improve our understanding of the contribution of Oort cloud comets to the zody, result in a better estimation of the extragalactic background light and provide a legacy dataset to allow for absolute calibration of all archival Spitzer Warm mission data.