Nan Liu, research assistant professor in physics in Arts & Sciences, received a $493,885 grant from NASA to study presolar grains in primitive meteorites. Under her new project, “Isotopic Characterization of Presolar Supernova Grains: Constraints on Dust Formation and Nucleosynthesis in Type II Supernovae,” Liu will obtain isotopic and structural compositions of presolar grains from ancient supernovae to constrain the production of elements and dust condensation. Her goal is to improve the understanding of the origins of the solar system.
BSE Color Mapping & Contrast Stretch
I’m experimenting with contrast stretching for BSE images. I think it might be useful to bring detail out of the 16-bit images, though it makes it more confusing to identify phases based on Z contrast (as linearity was compromised to bin the output 8-bit data into 256 percentile bins). I think a stretched and color-mapped BSE image would be useful in combination with X-ray overlays (which I have a student working on now).
Curious Marie and the Case of the Presolar Grains
This comic is about a meteorite.
51st LPSC
Yesterday was abstract submission day for LPSC, always among the most exciting and stressful days on the calendar. Our group has a great set of abstracts, read them here.
Comet 2I/Borisov
Gillis-Davis on St. Louis Public Radio
Jeff talks about SSERVI and water on the Moon — a great interview!
Wash U Scientists Study Moon Ice To Help Astronauts Explore Solar System
A very nice story about our SSERVI research, led by Jeff Gillis-Davis, written by Eli Chen at NPR. We’re very excited for this work!
New Logo!
Thanks to Lionel for creating our new logo:
SSERVI
Big News! Jeff Gillis-Davis will lead a Solar System Exploration and Research Virtual Institute to study water and space-weathering processes on the Moon and other bodies in the Solar System. We’re all very excited about this new research direction, and all the amazing collaborations that will come from it. We also have the best name: “ICE Five-O”.