We realize that the Stardust@home team has been rather quiet over the past month, but while scanning of the Interstellar Dust Collector is temporarily suspended at the Johnson Space Center, we have been working behind the scenes to move the project forward in some exciting new ways.
We are currently preparing and uploading high resolution scan data. These data are scans of tiles that have already been searched by dusters, but done at much higher resolution and with different illumination. It is possible that the poorer quality of the previous scans prevented important features from being seen and reported. That is why we are placing these news scans online. The data have not yet been placed into the active database for the VM. We are working on some technical issues with these scans before they will be ready for the VM. This may take another couple of weeks to sort out.
We are also preparing a full listing of the best candidates for interstellar tracks that the Stardust@home collaboration has so far produced. We will also be letting everyone know who were the first to discover these. Bear in mind, however, that these are only candidates and we still must follow-up on them in order to determine if they are indeed tracks, if they contain dust particles, and if those particles are interstellar in origin. It may be quite some time before we have confirmed interstellar dust.
These candidates will also be used in updated versions of the tutorial and examples pages.
We will do our best to keep you better informed about the work going on behind the scenes of Stardust@home. We thank you for your patience and we of course thank you for your important contributions to the project.
Update: 9 May 2007 - Working Behind the Scenes
Moderator: Stardust@home Team