Stardust@home

Yes, that's correct. The DFM was forward pointing, mounted on the whipple shield. That means that it reads mostly on any dust that the spacecraft runs into. This is mostly interplanetary dust when we're not near the comet. The quantity of interplanetary dust dwarfs the flux of interstellar particles...

Y'all wanted to know about CIDA and DFM. So here goes. CIDA is what is called a mass spectrometer. Dust enters it down a little tube, and strikes a plate in the back of the tube. Because it only strikes the plate if it goes down the tube, we know what direction it came from. That is to say, it came ...

It looks like you all figured most of this out on your own, but I'll take a shot at answering the questions, and maybe I can give you a little more detail. Like Bryan said, the primary methods of knowing it is interstellar are: 1) The direction of impact should be normal to the aerogel (it went stra...

I don't really know the full answer to your question, but I'll put a word in to Ryan and see if maybe I can't get him to come and pitch in his two cents. He is the postdoc who is working/did work on the flux calculations. (I think they're done now ... for the moment, with an intention to revisit the...

Hi jsmaje, Long time no talk! So DUNE, and DUNE are completely different missions. The one you're talking about is the dust explorer. It's a really cool mission idea -- essentially a mission whose sole purpose is to study the dust in our system. Since you asked about it, I passed your question onto ...

The machined parts come from all over meaning mostly from Johnson Space Center or Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory. The rest are commercial parts (like the microscope stage underneath the machined platform holding the collector.) We're very proud of our machinists. Without them ... well, we might ...

The tiles were made individually in a mold and "cooked" in an autoclave (kind of like a really hot, high-tech oven). I hear they shrink just a hair when they firm up so they don't generally stick to the mold and can be easily removed. Then they were shoved into the collector ... very caref...

The strange optical effects that Bryan is referring to occur near the edge of the tiles. It causes the spots on the surface of the aerogel to smear and move systematically up and down on the screen (or side to side) as you vary the focus. The effects won't make a second image that you can see, but i...

All right! You're thinking with the data! However, I don't agree with your assesment (though I agree with your attitude!) and here's why I think so: If the comet had formed near the sun and then moved outward and acquired ice, it most likely would have a rock core and an ice rim. However, what we se...

OK, Comet McNaught! (I'll answer the questions regarding CAI's shortly.) We only have one sighting of Comet McNaught, and so we don't have great orbital data on it. However, based on the last orbital data I saw, McNaught isn't bound to the sun anymore (it has a hyperbolic orbit). Therefore, it shoul...

Wow! What a great Pandora's box! Wait! Didn't Pandora's box unleash the evils unto the world? Questions and curiosity are good! This isn't a Pandora's box! :twisted: Give me a little bit to answer though. I'm currently evaluating possible tracks -- which is something I think you are also interested ...

Oooh! Good questions! Part of the reason those questions are so good is because we don't really know the answer to them definitively. I can't tell you: We're 100% sure CAI's formed near the sun. I can't prove it. I can just point out that it is the simplest possible solution for the evidence and ref...

One of the biggest findings of the Stardust mission is the evidence for “large scale mixingâ€

Yes, the tray is made of aluminum. In addition, the portion of the tray that was exposed to space is covered in an aluminum foil that can be peeled off and examined as its own "collector". A particle impacting the aluminum foil makes a small (typically microsopic) crater rather than a trac...

I think Nikita figured it out correctly. WW, you're sooooo close! I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag just yet.