Astronomy with a Microscope: Studying Stardust in the Laboratory

Grant’s View Branch – St. Louis County Library
9700 Musick Road, St. Louis, MO 63123 United States + Google Map

FREE and OPEN to ALL. Junior Academy members, middle and high school students welcome and encouraged to attend. Space is limited. Registration Required. Register below.

Featured Speaker: Christine Floss, Ph.D., Research Professor, Physics Department, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Laboratory for Space Sciences, McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis

Photo: 11.04.2014–Prof Christine Floss with Auger Electron Spectroscope in the background. Aluminum foil strip from the Stardust Collector and collected interstellar dust. Photo by Joe Angeles/WUSTL Photos

Almost every element on earth was formed from the heart of a star. Join Washington University Research Professor, Dr. Christine Floss, for an up close look at the stuff of which we are made– stardust. Dr. Floss identifies and conducts experiments on ‘stardust’ to learn how it is formed and studies trace elements in meteorites and lunar rocks. She is a member of NASA’s Stardust Mission Preliminary Examination Team (cometary and interstellar trays); identifying and conducting isotopic and compositional analysis of craters in Al foils from the Stardust Interstellar Collector. Stardust, a NASA Discovery-class mission, was the first to return samples from a comet and from interstellar space.

Astronomy with a Microscope a Science in St. Louis Series partnership between The Academy of Science of St. Louis, SLCL, the Photosynthetic Research Antenna Center (PARC), Washington University’s Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement (under a St. Louis project grant). Science in St. Louis is based upon work supported as part of the Photosynthetic Antenna Research Center (PARC), an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Award Number DE-SC0001035. We also would like to thank the National Science Foundation for support awarded to Kaitlyn Faries through the Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Award Number DGE-1143954.