Novel instrument for Dust Astronomy: Dust Telescope

The analysis of dust particles in space can tell us about their origin and interaction with the space environment that helps understanding the evolution of the solar system and the universe.1 2 There has been a significant advancement in dust detector/analyzer technology over the past decades; going from simple impact counters to the measurement of chemical composition and accurate dust trajectory determination. The Dust Telescope (DT) is the state of the art instrument that combines the Dust Trajectory Sensor (DTS) and the Chemical Analyzer (CA). A laboratory prototype of DT has been built and tested at the Heidelberg dust accelerator facility. The instrument combines a large target area, high mass resolution, wide dynamic range and trajectory measurement with accuracy better than 1% in speed and 0.1° degree in directionality for micron and submicron sized particles. Potential applications of the DT include the analysis of interstellar and interplanetary dust present in our Solar System, and the surface composition analysis of airless bodies such as the Moon, Europa, Ganymede, Enceladus or the Martian satellites.

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