Stardust vs. comet impacts?

[jdrockster]

Comet impacts will most likely be larger than stardust events. If the spacecraft entered the stardust zone with the collectors reversed, would we not be viewing them from the bottom? Would they not appear as a dot below the surface rather than the telltale ring of the impacts we have been trained to identify?

[Howie]

As far as I can tell, the real thing (tracks) are smaller and not as pronounced as the big bulls-eye we are used to seeing in tests and calibration movies???

I have definetely seen and marked some tracks, right or wrong, just so they look at them??? Very small, but they pop up out of nowhere from the area around them!!!

Also they do not seem to get the apparent upset surface slightly before the small circle appears??? For sure they are not anyway as large as the
known bulls-eyes!!!

Howie

[the moon]

I was wondering that too. But as far as I know, the deepest depth the microscope focuses in these movies is only a small fraction of the depth of the gel. So since we don't see any holes all way thru the gel where comet dust has come all the way thru, it's not likely any comet dust stopped in the range we can see. The gel must have been able to stop it all from penetrating that far or there's some kind of divider in the middle.

[albutterworth]

Hi

The two Stardust collectors were mounted back to back on a single deployment arm. There was nothing in between the backs of the aerogel tiles, but no impacts from either side penetrated all of the way through (tracks that large would have been seen during the initial documentation stage back in January '06)

There are no comet Wild-2 tracks in the interstellar collector.


Hope that clears up your questions.
Anna

[jsmithii2]

It would make sense that the objects that appear "out of nowhere" are coming from the opposite end of the collector as they appear to focus opposite from the surface impurities.
There doesn't appear to be a "track" to lead me to believe that the objects have entered from the interstellar dust collection side of the tiles. Rather it seems that some comet debris has entered more that halfway through the aerogel and into the side we are now viewing.
Meaning that we are not suggesting dust or debris has gone completely through the tile, but has traveled through the halfway point. Or, perhaps interstellar dust leaves a far less noticeable track?
Does this make sense?

[the moon]

Does this make sense?

Not really, the guy just said they're sure nothing came thru from the other side.

[navelmaniac]

Would there be always a track? Doesn't it depend of the speed of entry of the particle?
I wonder if there were some tests done with slow speed particles. How can we now their relative speed? Maybe they would have been trapped near the surface of the aerogel without damaging it too visibly?

I was wondering about this after viewing this movie on which I saw 5 (? need to focus lower to be sure) objects under the surface.
http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ ... =6226032V1

[rbolo28]

There is nothing there..the surface is not disturbed if your slide the focus all the way to the bottom of the page to see the surface of the gel.

[photon]

There is nothing there..the surface is not disturbed if your slide the focus all the way to the bottom of the page to see the surface of the gel.

The surface of the gel isn't at the bottom of the range, it's six bars from the top. If you think that then you need to take the training videos again.

There's definately things under the surface in that movie, the question is are they simply imperfections in the aerogel or something else. I would click them not because they're tracks, but they are something that isn't defined yet and need to be looked at.