Dominika Dabrowska (left) and Olga Muñoz (right) show us the IAA Cosmic Dust Laboratory
This week, three members of the iSPEX team were already in Granada for the European Aerosol Conference (EAC 2012), which created a very nice opportunity to visit the IAA Cosmic Dust Laboratory. This laboratory of the Instituto de Astrofísica Andalucía makes the translation between specific types of aerosols, and their scattering behaviour for more scattering angles than iSPEX will ever measure.
iSPEX measures the scattering properties of unknown particles for several scattering angles. The database created with this IAA Cosmic Dust Laboratory, the Amsterdam-Granada Light Scattering Database, could help us to determine from which particles we have measured the scattering properties. In the picture on the right, we see iSPEX with five different dust samples, which can form very typical aerosols when they become airborne: Sahara dust from Tunesia and Libya, and vulcanic ashes from Mt. Spurr (Alaska), Mt. st. Helens (Washington State), and Lokon (Sulawesi).
Hester Volten could not resist to relive the times of when she used to work on this instrument, and tried to measure the aerosol samples as well, however, this time with iSPEX. The IAA Cosmic Dust Laboratory illuminates a constant stream of particles with a laser. Next, it lets a polarimeter move around the illuminated sample on a ring, which makes it possible to measure the polarization from nearly all scattering angles. The Amsterdam-Granada Light Scattering Database is a database with the polarimetric measurements of light scattered of a very large number of aerosol samples. In our quest for the characterization of aerosols, this database might very well be the final step. The following film by Lightcurve Films gives a very good impression of this fascinating instrument.
