Exhibited in Art Among the Stars 2025
6 km/s comet dust captured in aerogel 1.9 AU from Sun
2025
high resolution Leica optical microscope, Photoshop
5.2 x 16.8 inches, 300dpi
This is an optical microscope image of a 20µm dust particle collected from comet Wild 2. The 6 km/s particle was collected by impact into silica aerogel - an exotic solid nano-material just slightly denser than air. The particle was collected at 1.9 AU and returned to Earth by the NASA Stardust spacecraft.
Don Brownlee
Astronomy Department, Faculty
I work on comets and early solar system materials that are billions of years old.
