The Draconid meteor shower peaks tonight as the Earth sweeps through primordial dust spewed from comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner. Ernst Zinner was a pioneering researcher in the study of presolar grains, a brilliant scientist and wonderful man who spent most of his career in our lab here at Wash U. Comet 21P is named for Ernst Zinner, but a different Ernst Zinner, a German astronomer, who made the second observation of 21P in 1913. Clearly this is a charmed name for space science!
Laboratory for Space Sciences @ Wash U Physics
“Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the grander view?”