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Our group seeks to understand the origin of the Solar System in the broader context of the local Galaxy through analyses of extraterrestrial materials (rocks and dust from asteroids and comets, circumstellar and interstellar grains, and samples of the solar wind).

We are a part of the Physics Department and the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and collaborate closely with the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

Follow the links for more information.

News

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Senegal Occultation of Ultima Thule

This was a really cool project — measuring New Horizons’ upcoming target by stellar occultation, a sort of eclipse of another star by a distant object in our Solar System where the shadow passed over a small part of Earth. In a few weeks we’ll get to see Ultima Thule up close!

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Super High-Resolution Meteorite Images

I’ve added a page that will feature some ~billion-pixel images of meteorites I’ve taken with electron and optical microscopes using this or this technique. The first one is a classic: Renazzo, the type sample of the CR chondrites. Renazzo fell in Italy in 1824 with a total mass of 1 kg. Check it out!