The Citizen Scientist

While on its way to its historic dust-catching rendezvous with Comet Wild 2, the Stardust spacecraft made 3 orbits around the sun. During two of these orbits, the spacecraft deployed its aerogel particle collection panel for a total of 195 days to capture microscopic interstellar particles. The particles were collected on the back side of the aerogel array, the front side being reserved for the comet flyby.

While the comet side of the aerogel collection array is believed to have captured many thousands of particles from Comet Wild 2, NASA estimates that the back side of the array may have collected only around 45 interstellar particles.

NASA and University of California, Berkeley, researchers, needs help finding these particles, for each side of the aerogel collector array has an area of 1,000 square centimeters (160 square inches). NASA plans to begin the search by microscopically scanning the interstellar dust side of the array to produce individual micro images of sections about the size of a grain of salt.

University of California, Berkeley, researchers have organized the Stardust@home project (Fig. 1) and invited Internet users to help find Stardust's interstellar particles by examining the microscopic images.

Amateur scientists with Madison Area Science and Technology (MAST) have already signed up for Stardust@home. Rocky Wenz, Research Projects Coordinator for MAST, spoke for the amateur science community when he said, "That has "Cool" written all over it!" George E. Hrabovsky, President of MAST and a long-time contributor to The Citizen Scientist, said, "This is an interesting opportunity to make a serious contribution to science."

Stardust@home participants who actually find a verified particle get to name it. In view of the rarity and value of those microscopic grains, naming rights provides a nice incentive to take time to scan samples.

For general background about Stardust&home, go here. If this excites your interest, then visit Stardust@home and sign up to become a Stardust participant.

Society for Amateur Science (SAS) members and readers of The Citizen Scientist who participate in Stardust@home and make a particle discovery are urged to send details of your achievement so we may publish a news story about you.