Astronomy buffs who jumped at the chance to use their home computers in the SETI @ home search for intelligent life in the universe will soon be able to join an Internet-based search for dust grains originating from stars hundreds of thousands of light years away.

"In a new project called Stardust @ home, University of California, Berkeley, researchers will invite Internet users to help them search for a few dozen submicroscopic grains of interstellar dust captured by NASA's Stardust spacecraft via a website at Berkeley. This aerogel array, which was mounted atop the Stardust spacecraft, was used to collect interstellar dust particles as well as dust from the tail of comet Wild 2.

Though Stardust's main mission was to capture dust from the tail of comet Wild 2 - dust dating from the origins of the solar system some 4.5 billion years ago - it also captured a sprinkling of dust from distant stars, perhaps created in supernova explosions less than 10 million years ago. Thanks to a grant from NASA and assistance from the Planetary Society, however, Westphal and his colleagues at the Space Sciences Laboratory have created a "virtual microscope" that will allow anyone with an Internet connection to scan some of the 1.5 million pictures of the aerogel for tracks left by speeding dust. Each picture will cover an area smaller than a grain of salt."

Read the full press release here (including info on how to participate in finding specs of space dust in the Aerogel!).