# Stardust@home

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**Stardust@home** is a [citizen science](/source/Citizen_science) project that encourages volunteers to search images for tiny [interstellar dust](/source/Interstellar_dust) impacts. The project began providing data for analysis on August 1, 2006.

From February to May 2000 and from August to December 2002, the [*Stardust*](/source/Stardust_(spacecraft)) spacecraft exposed its "Stardust Interstellar Dust Collector" (SIDC), a set of [aerogel](/source/Aerogel) blocks about 0.1 m2 (1 ft2) in total size, to interstellar dust. The collector media consist of 130 blocks of 1 and 3 cm thick silica-based aerogel mounted in aluminum cells.[1]

In order to spot impacts of interstellar dust, just over 700,000 individual fields of the aerogel will have to be visually inspected using large magnification.[2] Each field, which is composed of 40 images, will thus be termed a "focus movie". Stardust@home will try to achieve this by distributing the work among volunteers. Unlike [distributed computing](/source/Distributed_computing) projects, it does not try to harness the processing power of many computers. It uses them only to distribute and present the tasks to humans. This approach is similar to the earlier [Clickworkers](/source/Clickworkers) project to find Martian craters.

Participants must pass a test to qualify to register to participate. After registering and passing the test, participants have access to the web-based "virtual microscope" which allows them to search each field for interstellar dust impacts by focusing up and down with a focus control.

As an incentive for volunteers, the first five phases of Stardust@home allowed the first individual to discover a particular interstellar dust particle to name it. Also, the discoverer could appear as a co-author on any scientific paper announcing the discovery of the particle. As of 2023, numerous peer-reviewed papers summarizing the results of the Stardust Interstellar Preliminary Examination (ISPE) that include these volunteers as co-authors have been published in *[Meteoritics & Planetary Science](/source/Meteoritics_%26_Planetary_Science)*.

## Phases

Stardust@home has been divided into six phases. Phase I became publicly available on August 1, 2006, Phase II in August 2007, Phase III in March 2010, Phase IV in July 2011, Phase V in May 2012, and Phase VI in June 2013.[3]

Phase VI includes over 30,000 new "movies" representing eight aerogel tiles. The scoring method was also upgraded and, unlike the other phases, Stardust@home can no longer guarantee first finders of particles will be listed as co-authors on any scientific papers written about the discoveries.[4]

## See also

- [Clickworkers](/source/Clickworkers)
- [Crowdsourcing](/source/Crowdsourcing)
- [Zooniverse](/source/Zooniverse_(citizen_science_project))
- [Galaxy Zoo](/source/Galaxy_Zoo)
- [The Daily Minor Planet](/source/The_Daily_Minor_Planet)
- [SETI@home](/source/SETI@home)

## References

1. ["Dust Collector Grid With Aerogel"](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stardust/spacecraft/collector-index.html). [NASA](/source/NASA). Retrieved 2006-03-08.

1. ["Stardust@home Update : Scanning, Testing, and Calibration Movies"](https://web.archive.org/web/20080828160900/http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/stardustathome/update_061206.html). [The Planetary Society](/source/The_Planetary_Society). Archived from [the original](http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/stardustathome/update_061206.html) on 2008-08-28. Retrieved 2008-07-26.

1. ["Timeline"](https://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/about/timeline/). Stardust@Home. Retrieved September 14, 2021.

1. ["Stardust@home Phase VI Launching in June 2013"](http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/blog/?p=621). Stardust@Home Blog. Retrieved June 20, 2013.

## External links

- [stardust@home](http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/)
- [NASA Stardust Mission Homepage](http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html)

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Stardust@home](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stardust%40home) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stardust%40home?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.