"Comet
Dust In the Laboratory", an illustrated lecture by Dr. Scott Messenger
of Washington University, will be featured at the August meeting of
the St. Louis Astronomical Society. The meeting will begin at 7:30 PM
Friday, August 17, in McDonnell Hall, Room 162, on the Washington University
campus. McDonnell Hall is accessible from Forsyth Boulevard via Houston
Way. The presentation, cosponsored by NASA's Missouri Space Grant Consortium,
is open to the public free of charge.
For the past twenty years, NASA has collected interplanetary dust in
the stratosphere, using high altitude research aircraft. These particles
are from comets and asteroids. They preserve primitive solar system
materials, and even some materials created over 4.8 billion years ago,
before the Sun and Earth were formed. Recent models now suggest that
it may be possible to collect dust from several comets that cross the
Earth's orbit. Dr. Messenger will talk about the study of this extraterrestrial
material, and what we can learn from it about the origin of the solar
system.
Dr. Scott Messenger is a Senior Research Scientist in the Department
of Physics at Washington University in Saint Louis. He received his
Doctorate from Washington University in 1997, worked as a National Research
Council Post-Doctoral Research Associate in Washington, D.C., and returned
to Washington University in 1999.. His research interests center on
the microscopic study of extraterrestrial materials, particularly of
space dust.
For more information
about Dr. Scott Messenger, click
here.