Stardust@home新闻贴

Hi everyone,

The website and the forum will be temporarily offline tomorrow, Aug. 4, 2006 from 1-3pm Pacific Time for 2 hours. We are going to do some maintenance work that will hopefully allow for faster connections.

Thank you and happy dusting,

网站将于太平洋时间2006年8月4日1-3pm停机维护。

也就是北京时间8月5日5-8am，反正大家都在睡觉[em02]

[[i] Last edited by Rojer on 2006-8-13 at 10:31 [/i]]

...."停机2个小时"....怎么可能从5点到8点.
另,现在似乎Pacific Time 是GMT-7啊,我们是GMT+8.....你再算算?....

太平洋时间是西8，所以我们比他们提前16h
那么他们的4号下午1点就是我们的5号早上5点啊！
美国太平洋标准时间 PST 和太平洋夏令时 PDT 相差一个小时。搞错了？

我不久前用英文版的64XP的时候是用GMT-7的太平洋时间
你可以去看看星尘给你发的邮件 里面提到计划开始时间是11:00am(太平洋) ,又说是GMT 18:00,表明了他们的太平洋时间是GMT-7.
.....其实早上4和5点对我们没什么差别..

Aug. 4, 2006 - 3:00 PM PDT
2006年8月4日 太平洋夏时制 3：00pm

Many of you have put in a huge amount of work already, even though we've been up for only a few days. You've had to struggle with us through some major and minor glitches. We want to thank you for your patience, hard work, and collegiality. This truly is a fantastic collaboration. We could not do this project without you.
仅仅这开始后的几天时间里诸位就已经做了大量的工作。你们必须同我们一起努力越过一些主要的和次要的干扰。我们应该感谢你们的耐心、努力和分享成果。这真是梦幻般的协作。离开了你们这个项目我们什么也做不了。

We apologize for the bugs with the VM. Today we are posting a listing of known bugs on a new forum thread. We are working hard to get each bug fixed as soon as we can. If you run into a problem, please first look at the list. If the problem is not on the list, please either post to the forum about it, or, if you think that it's a security issue, please send us a private message in the forum.
我们对VM的存在的一些问题表示歉意。今天我们公布了一些已知的问题，我们会尽最大努力尽快修补每一个问题。如果你在使用中遇到了问题请先看一下问题列表，如果不是列表中的请在论坛里提出，如果你认为是安全方面的问题请PM我们。

Many are wondering when we will give feedback on the candidate interstellar tracks that you've identified. Here's our procedure. As you search focus movies, we score each movie, based on the number of "hits" and the measured efficiencies of the people who identified them. We then individually examine each movie, starting with the movies with the biggest scores and going down the list. It may take many weeks for us to get to any given event, depending on where it is in the list. Events which have been identified by only one or two people might take even longer, since they will be far down the list. As we evaluate candidates, we will enter them into the database so that you can see the status of your events. We will then first look at our high-resolution images of these events. If they still look promising, we will then have an actual pair of eyes look at the events at high magnification in the Cosmic Dust Lab in Houston. Events that still look promising will have to be extracted from the collector before we can definitively identify them as interstellar. We will update the status of the events as we go through each stage of evaluation.
很多人都想知道何时我们会对候选轨迹给出反馈。我们的程序是这样的。如同各位搜索聚焦影片，我们评价每个片子，基于“点击”的数目以及它们鉴别者的效率。我们独立的检查每一个“情况”，从确认者最多的开始查。可能会花数周的时间触及任何一个给定的“情况”，这取决于它处在列表的位置。那些只有一两个人确认的“情况”，会处在列表的底部，可能还需要更长的时间。当我们评价一个片子就会把它输入数据库这样你就可以看到你的片子的状态。我们首先看这些“情况”的高解析度影像，如果有希望，那么就会派人在休斯敦的彗星尘埃实验室用高放大倍数看看这些“情况”。如果依旧是有希望，在我们确认它是来自星际之前我们会把它从收集器里提取出来。我们将在评估的每个阶段更新这些“情况”的状态。

Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2006 5:29 pm    Post subject: Update: 9 Aug 2006 - New Movies                
Tile I007 uploaded last night and the movies were made available this morning.

Tile I033 is uploading tonight.
I007块的数据昨晚上传片子今天早上将可用。I033块的数据今晚正在上传。
发布时间上看应该是北京时间9号的20：29

Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2006 5:47 pm
8月12日8：47

你们中的许多人都想知道我们何时以及怎样察看已经点击过的影片。
首先，我们挑出现今的分最高的100部影片，也就是是同意者最多的片子，来察看这些聚焦影片。

我们从这些影片中选出一小部分到休斯敦察看相应的气凝胶。我们只能在不扫描气凝胶的时候做这件事，每周也就是几个小时。

我们在伯克利远程连接到休斯敦的显微镜。
第一次复查的时候，我们使用和聚焦影片相同的放大倍数，但是可以更好的控制聚焦深度。
如今已经有9部片子通过了第一轮审查。我们将回去做第二轮复查检验影片中有趣的特征。
因为我们不知道星际尘埃的轨迹是什么样的，所以在这个早期阶段对漠视任何一部片子持非常谨慎的态度。

前100中的一些片子显示出相似的特征。通过复查几个这样的片子，我们希望改进VM的搜索策略。学习如何寻找尘埃轨迹是一个反复的过程，而每一次都是进步。

希望你们享受参与搜索银河尘埃的乐趣。我们正有规律的添加新的聚焦影片，并会持续数月直到扫描完整个星际尘埃收集器。

Aug. 16, 2006 - 4:40 PM PDT
太平洋夏时制 2006.8.16 4：40 pm （北京时间8月17日7：40）
The Stardust@home collaboration -- consisting of thousands of volunteers all over the world, and professional scientists at U. C. Berkeley and NASA/JSC -- has identified a number of intriguing features  in the Stardust Interstellar Dust Collector. Some of these could be interstellar dust tracks. We emphasize that these are only candidates:  we do not yet know whether these are interstellar dust tracks or something else entirely.  Understanding them may take weeks or months of hard work.
Stardust@home 的协作——包括来自全球的上千志愿者和 U.C.Berkeley 以及 NASA/JSC 的专业科学家——已经在星尘号的星际尘埃收集器中发现了一些有趣的特征。其中有些可能是尘埃轨迹。要强调的是这些仅是候选者：我们完全不知道这些究竟是星际尘埃还是其它的什么东西。要知道这需要花费几周或几个月的辛劳。

In less than two weeks, the Stardust@home collaboration has already done more than 7 million searches.  Volunteers have identified amazingly subtle features in the aerogel collectors.  We are mightily encouraged that the Stardust@home approach will be successful.
在不到两周的时间里，志愿者已经完成了超过7百万次的搜索。志愿者识别出了气凝胶中令人惊异的细微结构。对此我们深受鼓舞相信Stardust@home的目标将圆满完成。

We are uploading data from one newly scanned aerogel tile today, with another four tiles currently being processed. We produce about 4000 new focus movies each day.  
今天我们上传了一块新扫描的凝胶块的数据，同时还有4块的数据正在处理中。我们每天会产生大约4000部新片子。

There has been some discussion on the forum about people "cheating" by advancing rapidly through real data and responding only to calibration movies. Out of the top 200 top-ranked volunteers, eight people have been "cheating." Fortunately, they have only cheated themselves --- out of an opportunity to find interstellar dust particles. The other highest scored collaborators are simply incredibly hard-working and talented! Here is a discussion of how we found the "cheaters", what we have done about it, and why cheaters don't have any negative effect on our search.
在论坛里有一些关于有人快速跳过真实影片只回答C片的欺骗手段的讨论。在前两百名中有8人有作弊。幸运的是他们只是在骗自己——失去了发现星际尘埃颗粒的机会。其余的最高分数的合作者只能说是难以置信的努力和聪明！有一篇讨论是关于我们如何发现作弊者的，会怎样处理，以及为什么作弊没有给我们的搜索代来消极影响。

PS：已有8人被枪毙了！：D

[[i] Last edited by Rojer on 2006-8-17 at 16:43 [/i]]

今天早上有两名被认为是作弊的人恢复了名誉。
其中一位是因为对影片聚焦状况判的比较保守，有差不多一半被判作Bad，所以一旦是聚焦不太好的片子都迅速被判作坏片，而C片都是聚焦比较好的所以花费较长的时间进行判别。
另一人是在开始阶段对轨迹判别十分仔细，主要是找到之后在学习如何识别它们，精通之后便对C片的处理十分的迅速。项目组截取该用户前天的数据进行了分析，发现该用户R片和C片所用的时间已经趋于平衡。
rcklein 和 minkiemink 的成绩被恢复，项目组对两人表示歉意并感谢他们的认真工作。

相信是事主主动联系把

Aug. 24, 2006 - 7:15 PM PDT
太平洋夏时制2006年8月24日 7:15 PM  （北京时间2006年8月25日 10:15 AM）

The Stardust@home Team is taking a short hiatus from reviewing candidates for Stardust@home. We're not slacking off -- we're doing around-the-clock analyses of cometary Stardust samples for the next few days. We're working with Matthew Marcus and Sirine Fakra, using the 10.3.2 x-ray microprobe at the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, just down the hill from us at the Space Sciences Laboratory at U. C. Berkeley.
Stardust@home 小组暂时中断了对 Starduat@home 候选者的复查工作。我们不是在偷懒——在接下来的几天里要对星尘号的彗星样品进行不间断的分析。我们正同 Matthew Marcus 和 Sirine Fakra 一起使用劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室的先进光源上的10.3.2 X 射线微探针，就在我们伯克利空间科学实验室的山下面。

The Advanced Light Source is basically a very powerful infrared, ultraviolet, and x-ray light source servicing a number of different microscopes. It's the size of a shopping mall and sensitive enough to look at the tiniest of samples. We are analyzing Stardust cometary samples. We're really accomplishing two things at once -- we're getting very detailed information about the composition of cometary dust that the Stardust mission brought back, and we are also getting excellent experience in preparation for the analysis of the interstellar dust that we're all looking for with Stardust@home. This type of analysis may be one of the first things we do with the interstellar dust once we've located and extracted it from the aerogel collector in Houston.
先进光源基本上就是一个非常强大的为各种显微镜服务的红外、紫外和 X 射线源，有购物中心那么大，有足以看清最小样品的灵敏度。我们正在分析星尘号的彗星样品。马上就会完成两件事——我们得到了星尘号所带回的彗星尘埃非常详细的成分信息；同时也为目前我们通过 Stardust@home 正在搜索的星际尘埃的分析积累了非常好的经验。这样的分析必须要在我们定位并从气凝胶中提取出星际尘埃之前完成。

2006年9月6日


What's next -- how do you work with a $200 million collector?
(Very carefully!)
接下来是什么？——怎样处理价值2亿美元的收集器？（非常的小心！）

The Stardust@home collaboration has now identified several candidate features in the aerogel that may be the tracks of the first contemporary interstellar dust particles ever brought back to Earth for study (or, they may be something else). We have examined several of these as well as we can through the microscope in the Cosmic Dust Laboratory. Several have passed this cut -- that is, they are still very promising -- and we can't wait to find out what they really are.
Stardust@home 的协作已经在气凝胶中挑出了一些候选特征，或许就是首次被带回地球研究得星际尘埃的轨迹（也可能什么都不是）。一旦我们能使用彗星尘埃实验室的显微镜，便检查了其中的一些。有些已经通过了此次筛选——的确，它们很有希望，我们已经等不及要知道他们究竟是什么东西了。

Unfortunately, it is very difficult to get good images of tracks in the aerogel tiles while they are still in the flight tray (as many of you have pointed out). So to make further progress, we will need to remove the tracks from the collector.
不幸的是（如同许多人指出的那样），由于凝胶块还在收集器的盘子里所以很难得到轨迹在凝胶中的好图像。为进一步的处理，我们需要从收集器中取出这些轨迹。

We are considering two options. The first is to extract the tiles containing these candidate tracks from the collector. This will enable us to examine the tracks in transmitted light, which gives much improved visibility, particularly at very high magnification (we currently have to use reflected light illumination). There are two principal risks in doing this. First, because the aerogel may be somewhat distorted during extraction, we may partially lose the ability to accurately determine where on the sky the particle originated. This could compromise our ability to distinguish between interstellar dust and interplanetary dust. Second, the aerogel is very fragile; it could just fall apart if we try to remove it from the tray. We do have a flight spare that we could practice with, but we know from our experience with the cometary aerogel that it has changed somewhat in space; it has become more brittle. We don't think that either of these issues is very serious, but they have to be considered carefully.
我们考虑了两种方案。第一个方案是从收集器中把包含轨迹的块取出。这将使我们能在透射光中检查这些轨迹，那将大大提高可视性，尤其是在很高的放大倍数下（我们现在使用的反射光照明）。这么做有两个主要的风险。首先，凝胶在取出时可能会受到一些损坏，将使我们部分的丧失测定微利来自天空的哪个方向的能力。这有可能危及我们区分星际尘埃和太阳系内尘埃的能力。其次，气凝胶非常易碎，可能在把它从碟子里弄出来的时候会碎成块儿。我们确实有大量可供练习的备用品，但是我们从彗星尘埃的凝胶那里得到的经验是：凝胶在太空里发生了一些变化，变得更加易碎了。我们不认为这些结果会很严重，但是它们必须被认真考虑。

The second option is to extract the track directly from the aerogel in a "keystone", using an extraction technique that we developed here at Berkeley specifically for Stardust and have been using successfully for several months on the cometary collector. Here we use robotically-controlled micromanipulators and extremely sharp glass needles to machine the aerogel, and extract tracks in tiny doorstop-shaped wedges of aerogel that we call "keystones". The visibility of tracks in these tiny keystones is superb (see picture below). But we would be doing the keystone microsurgery either over or next to the entire collector. We would have to build in numerous safeguards to be absolutely sure that nothing could endanger the collector.
第二种方案是直接从气凝胶中提取出含有轨迹的楔形块，用的是我们在伯克利特别为 Stardust 开发并在数月前成功用在彗星收集器上的提取技术。在此我们用自动控制的显微操作器和极其尖锐的玻璃针来加工气凝胶，并取出含有轨迹的一小块楔形凝胶，我们称之为“楔石”。这些小楔石中的轨迹其可视性非常的好。但是做这样的显微手术差不多要覆盖整个收集器上空。我们要建立众多的安全机制确保收集器的绝对安全。

[img]http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/images/DSCN3765.JPG[/img]


If this were almost any other project, we could afford to take risks and try some things out. But the interstellar collector is practically priceless(well, not exactly priceless, but it would cost at least $200 million to get another one). So we have to be incredibly careful, and we have to make sure that we've thought this through extremely thoroughly.
如果是其他的项目,我们可以冒些风险试着做些事情。但是星际尘埃几乎是无价的（好吧、不是无价的，但是要花至少2亿美元才能再弄些来）。所以我们不得不极端小心，确保想到了所有可能的事情。

Fortunately, a situation like this has come up before. In the late 1960's, when the Apollo missions were bringing back rocks from the Moon, NASA recognized that they needed a way to oversee the handling of these incredibly precious samples. So NASA organized a committee of scientists called the Curation and Analysis Planning Team for Extraterrestrial Materials (CAPTEM) to oversee the curation of the Moon rocks -- that is, to advise NASA on how to store and distribute them. Even though it's been nearly 40 years, this committee is still very busy making recommendations to NASA on the curation and distribution of all kinds of extraterrestrial samples to scientists all over the world. These include the Apollo moon rocks, which are still in very heavy demand, but now also include samples from the Genesis mission and now Stardust.
所幸的是，以前有过类似的情形。在上世纪60年代末，当阿波罗计划从月球带回岩石的时候，NASA 认识到需要一种方法来监督对这些无价之宝的处理。因此 NASA 组建了一个称作“掌管与分析地外物质计划编制组”(CAPTEM)的科学家委员会来监督月球岩石的掌管，也就是向 NASA 提供如何对其保存和分发的建议。时至今日已经将近40年了，该小组依然忙碌于向 NASA 提供所有类似的地外样品在掌管以及向全球的科学家分发方面的建议。包括阿波罗带回的岩石——它依然是供不应求，以及如今的“起源”号样品和“星尘”样品。

A subcommittee of CAPTEM has been organized for the oversight and allocation of the Stardust samples. Amazingly, it's called the Stardust Sample Allocation Subcommittee (SSAS). The Stardust@home project director, Andrew Westphal, is on this subcommittee. The SSAS will meet on Sept 18-19 in at the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) in Houston near NASA's Johnson Space Center. (See the ARES website). At this meeting, we will decide on a course of action, then make a recommendation to the CAPTEM committee that will meet at LPI near the end of October. We will keep the Stardust@home collaboration informed as this careful decision-making proceeds.
CAPTEM 的一个下属委员会已经组建起来负责星尘样品的监督及分配。它叫“星尘号样品分配分委员会”（SSAS）。Stardust@home 的项目主管 Andrew Westphal 就在其中。SSAS 将在9月18-19日于休斯敦的月球与行星学会（LPI）集会。离 NASA 的约翰逊航天中心不远。在此次会议上我们将决定行动的方针，然后向 CAPTEM 委员会建议在10月底再次集会。在这个谨慎抉择的过程中我们将保持 Stardust@home 的协作得到最新消息。

This is the frustrating part: this is going to take a while. There is just no other way. We have to be very, very careful with these precious samples. After all, they belong to all the American people, who paid for the mission.
这就是阻力所在，还需要一段时间。别无他途。我们必须非常、非常小心的对待这些珍贵的样品。毕竟，它们属于全体美国纳税人。

Finally, a word about the huge advantage of doing sample-return missions. Stardust, like Apollo and Genesis, brought back samples from space that can be studied simultaneously by hundreds of scientists all over the world. Many, if not most, of the scientific instruments that are now being used to analyze Apollo samples couldn't have even been imagined in the 1960's. Even in the case of Stardust, some of the instruments that are now being used didn't exist when Stardust was launched in 1999. Some other instruments, like the synchrotrons that we mentioned in an earlier news item, are the size of shopping malls, and could never practically be flown in space. As long as we're careful, these same samples will be studied by our grandchildren using instruments that we cannot imagine today. They will be answering questions that we don't even know how to pose.
最后，总结一下取样返回任务的巨大优越性。“星尘”和“阿波罗”、“起源”一样，从太空带回样品使得全球的数百位科学家得以同时对其进行研究。此外、如今用于分析阿波罗样品的科学设备岩石上世纪60年代无法想象的。“星尘”也有同样的情况，一些正在使用的设备在它发射时还不存在。另一些设备，如先前的新闻里提到的购物中心般大小的同步加速器，是几乎可能被发射到太空中的。只要我们处处小心，我们的子孙就能用我们现在无法想象的设备研究这些样品。他们将会回答那些我们无法回答的问题。

太平洋时间2006年9月19日，Stardust@home小组的 Anna Butterworth 博士生下了5磅13盎司的女孩儿，母女平安取名 Eleanor Rose。
一旦 Eleanor 能够抬起头，我们期望她能加入到 Stardust@home 的搜索中。[em02]

[url]http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1205[/url]

Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2006 5:30 pm    Post subject: Update: 25 Sep 06 - CAPTEM Recommendations
2006年9月25日 5：30 pm 发布

How do you work with a $200 million collector? An update.
怎样处理价值2亿美元的收集器？更新。

On September 18, the Stardust@home project director, Andrew Westphal, presented the current status of the Stardust@home search to the CAPTEM Stardust Oversight Committee at the Lunar and Planetary Institute near NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. Dr. Westphal is also the chair of the committee, but he set aside that role when making this presentation. The question at issue was: how do we further investigate the candidate interstellar tracks that Stardust@home collaborators -- you!! -- have identified, with minimal risk to the collector? If this were almost any other piece of hardware, there would be very little discussion: we would just yank out aerogel tiles and look at them under a microscope. But if we accidentally damage or destroy the Stardust Interstellar Collector, it would cost more than $200 million, and many years, to get another one. So, we have to be extremely careful and cautious with anything that we do to this collector.
9月18日，Stardust@home 的项目主管 Andrew Westphal 向位于休斯敦 NASA 约翰逊宇航中心附近的月球与行星学会的 CAPTEM（Curation and Analysis Planning Team for Extraterrestrial Materials）、星尘监督委员会提交了当前 Stardust@home 搜索的状况。Westphal 博士是该委员会的主席，不过在此次陈述时坐在边上。讨论的问题是：我们如何以最小的风险进一步的调查由 Stardust@home 的协作者——也就是你——筛选出的星际轨迹候选者。如果这只是别的什么普通硬件，那就用不着讨论什么了：我们会把凝胶块儿从里面拉出来放在显微镜下。但是如果我们意外地对星际尘埃收集器造成了伤害或损毁，那就要另外花费2亿美元以及许多年才能再弄一个来。所以我们必须对收集器做的任何事都极为小心、谨慎。

Many options were discussed by the committee, including extracting tracks directly from the tray in aerogel "keystones" (tiny wedge-shaped sections of aerogel surrounding the tracks), extracting individual tiles, and several other possibilities. In the end, the committee came to a consensus and recommended the following approach:
会上讨论了很多方式，包括从碟子里直接提取包含轨迹的“楔形块”（包围轨迹的楔形凝胶微块儿），取出单个的凝胶块，以及其他的一些可能。最后会议一致同意并建议如下步骤：

Try to evaluate candidate interstellar tracks by oblique viewing, gently folding back foils and viewing in transmitted illumination, and viewing the tracks through the back of the tile with the tray inverted. Defer any tile or keystone extraction until we evaluate using these minimal-contact methods. In anticipation of the eventual need to extract tracks, a tile from the flight spare should be used to experiment on. Also, the possibility of keystoning using the microscope stage for motion and a glass needle fixed to the microscope head should be evaluated.
试图以斜视方向评估候选轨迹，渐渐的把衬板番过来以透射光照射并从凝胶块的背面观察轨迹。推迟任何整块或楔形块取出直到我们以这种最小接触的方法评估完。预计最终需要提取轨迹，一个飞行备用的凝胶块会拿来做实验。同样，可能采用的楔形提取所用到的显微镜平台（运动以及安置在显微镜头上的玻璃针）也将被评估。

Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 6:09 pm    Post subject: Update: 16 Oct 06 - Over 20 Million Served
2006年十月十六日发布   超过2千万的服务量

As of October 6th, 2006 the Stardust@home collaborators have performed more than 20 million searches! More than a quarter of the aerogel collector has been scanned and those focus movies uploaded.
在2006年10月的第六天，Stardust@home 的和作者们完成了超过2千万次的搜索！是凝胶收集器已扫描过并上传的影片的1/4还多。

The Stardust@home UC Berkeley team is continuing to review candidate tracks flagged by our thousands of world-wide collaborators. While Dr. Butterworth and her husband are home caring for their new baby, we have added three new faces to our team: Rastika Prasad, David Frank, and Nicole Kelley. They are undergraduate students at UC Berkeley who are helping out part time to create and upload new movies to the Amazon server and review candidates.
Stardust@home 的伯克利小组还在继续复查那些被全球数千的志愿者标出的候选轨迹。由于 Butterworth 博士和她的丈夫正在家中照顾他们的新生儿，我们添了三个新人到队伍中：Rastika Prasad, David Frank 和 Nicole Kelley。他们是伯克利的在校生，部分时间里帮我们生成并上传新的影片到 Amazon 的服务器以及复查候选者。

We are working on updates to the tutorial . The biggest update, still in the works, is some new direction on how to deal with inclusions in the aerogel. We are now confident that they should not be confused with real interstellar dust tracks and are asking volunteers to ignore them much as you would other artifacts like scratches, etc.
我们正在升级指南。最大的改动也能够在进行中，就是新的指导如何对待凝胶中的内含物。我们很有信心它们将不会再被当作真正的星际尘埃轨迹，并要求志愿者忽略它们就像其他的划痕。

Finally, we acknowledge that the currently top-ranked volunteer, CerealKiller, is indeed a computer program created by one of the volunteers. He has admitted as much and discussed his program on the forum as well as with the team. We applaud CerealKiller for his efforts. The program has been very successful in achieving a high rank, much of that is due to its ability to search nonstop. We do encourage volunteers to be creative and go ahead and try their hand at such endeavors. Be assured that this in no way means that the help of the thousands of volunteers searching by hand is not needed.
最后，我们确知当前的首位志愿者——CerealKiller，的确是一位志愿者编写的计算机程序。他已经多次被确认并在论坛里同我们的小组讨论他的程序多次。我们为 CerealKiller 的成就喝彩。该程序在获得高分方面已经非常成功了，这很大程度上归功于它不间断搜索的特性。我们鼓励志愿者有创造性并试着通过他们双手的努力走到前面。要确信的是，这并不是说数千志愿者的人工搜索帮助是不必要的。

Programs, such as CerealKiller may show promise, but we have much more confidence in the ability of our human collaborators to find interstellar dust effectively.
如同 CerealKiller 这样的程序将被允许，但是我们对我们的人类志愿者在有效的寻找星际尘埃方面的能力有着更多的信心。

We have been considering creating a separate ranking for computer programs, so that those interested in the rankings can compare their work against fellow humans. However, CerealKiller has terminated the program for now, as it was simply an experiement on his part to see how well his algorithm would do.
我们正考虑为计算机程序建立一个分离的排名，这样那些对名次感兴趣的可以同人类对照它们的工作。不过，现在 CerealKiller 已经把他的程序终止了，因为这只是一个实验，他只是想看看他的算法工作的如何。

Thank you as always and keep looking for that dust!
永远感谢你们！继续寻找那尘埃吧！

[[i] Last edited by Rojer on 2006-10-19 at 10:55 [/i]]

[url]http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1297[/url]


Posted: Thu Oct 19, 2006 2:29 pm    Post subject: Update: 19 Oct 06 - Progress Update       
2006/10/19 2:29  进度更新
       
As of today, October 19th, 2006, we have two new tiles uploaded to the Amazon site with several more in the queue.
今天我们向Amazon上传了两个新块儿的数据。

About 70,000 of the most-searched focus movies have been retired, so volunteers will be seeing more "fresh" focus movies when they search using the Virtual Microscope.
大约7万个被搜索最多的片子退役了，所以志愿者在使用虚拟显微镜搜索时将看到更多“新鲜”的片子。

Tomorrow at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, we will begin rescanning focus movies that had marginal or bad focus so that we can upload them again for better evaluation.
明天在休斯敦的约翰逊空间中心，我们将开始重新扫描那些边缘的及聚焦不好的片子，这样我们就能再次将它们上传进行更好的评估。

The Berkeley Stardust@home Team has now uploaded their reports on 571 candidates reviewed so far. See your "My Events" page to find out what the determinations are for the focus movies you have reviewed.
伯克利 Stardust@home 小组上传了目前复查过的571个候选者的报告。看看你的“My Events” 页面找出你曾报告的片子的判定。

Thanks again to all of our wonderful volunteers. The project is coming along very well so far due to your efforts.
再次感谢全体志愿者。在你们的努力下项目到目前进行的非常顺利。

Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 3:39 pm    Post subject: Update: 1 Dec 06 - Getting a Better Look at the Collector

Recently, Ron Bastien and Jack Warren at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) acquired about 600 high-resolution focus movies of candidate extraterrestrial tracks in the Stardust Interstellar Dust Collector, identified by our Stardust@home collaborators. Each movie is larger than 100 Megabytes! We are now going through these movies at Berkeley. We are finding that this is helpful, and we have made a new discovery: an apparent "swarm" of tracks that enter the collector nearly parallel to the surface. This is probably due to an impact somewhere on the collector. We will be tracking this down in the coming weeks.
最近，在约翰逊宇航中心的 Ron Bastien 和 Jack Warren 获得了约6百部高解析度的由我们的志愿者确认的候选轨迹影片。每一部片子都超过100Mb！我们正在伯克利仔细检查这些片子。我们发现这很有帮助，并且有一个新的发现：明显有“一群”轨迹是差不多平行的进入收集器表面的。这个能是由发生在收集器某处的撞击造成的。在未来几周里我们会继续追踪这一发现。

The next big step will be rescanning these movies using transmitted illumination. We expect a critical test on the flight-spare collector to be done at JSC in the next few days. If successful, this will enable us to change from reflected light (the worst possible illumination method) to transmitted light. The transmitted light has already been reinstalled in the microscope, but we have to confirm that we can reliably and safely fold back the foils holding the aerogel tiles in place.
接下来的一个大动作就是在透射光照下重新扫描这些片子。我们期待最近几天里在约翰逊宇航中心（JSC）对飞行备用件的收集器进行一次严格的测试。如果成功，我们就能用透射照明取代原先的反射照明（最糟糕的照明方式）。透射灯已经重新装入显微镜，但是我们必须确保能安全可靠的去掉拖着凝胶块的挡板。

Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2006 10:27 am    Post subject: Update: 7 Dec 06 - Foil tests at JSC and Comet Dust Results
2006年12月7日 发布
衬板试验
                
The foil unfolding test at JSC is complete, and the analysis is underway. The point of this test was to find out if unfolding the aluminum foils wrapping the backs of the aerogel tiles would tilt or distort the aerogel significantly. If it does this could be a problem, since we rely on the stability of the aerogel tiles to be able to reconstruct trajectories, and thus distinguish betwen interstellar dust and interplanetary dust. We want to unfold the foils so that we can examine and image the tiles using transmitted illumination (light from below the tile) rather than reflected illumination (light through the microscope objective lens). We know from previous experience that transmitted illumination is vastly better than reflected, but we've been prevented from using it on the Stardust Interstellar collectors because of these aluminum foils.
衬板的打开试验已在 JSC 完成，正在进行分析。此项试验的目的是查明打开包裹在凝胶块背面的铝衬板是否会对凝胶块造成显著的扭曲或倾斜。如果出现这种情况那将是个问题，因为我们依靠凝胶块的稳固性来重建弹道，并由此区分星际尘埃和太阳系内尘埃。我们打算打开衬板这样就能用透射光（光线从凝胶块下面照过来）而不是反射光（光线从显微镜物镜处照过去）照明来对凝胶块进行检查、拍照。根据以前的经验我们知道透射照明比反射照明要好太多了，但是因为这些铝衬板使我们没办法在星尘号的星际尘埃收集器上这么用。

This test was done on the flight spare tray by first making a focus map (a measurement of the altitude of the aerogel tile at about 200 points on a grid) before unfolding the foil, then doing it again after. We are cautiously optimistic that the tilting and distortion of the aerogel were minimal. We'll let you know.
试验是在飞行备用的碟子上进行的，首先在打开衬托前做一张聚焦图（在一个格子里取200个点测量凝胶块的高度），打开后再作一次。我们对凝胶最小限度的倾斜和扭曲表示谨慎的乐观。会让你们知道的。

Also, after nearly a year of intense effort on the part of nearly 200 scientists around the world, the first reports on the analysis of the cometary dust collected by Stardust (the other Stardust mission!) are coming out next week in Science magazine. There will be seven papers: a summary of the mission and the exciting discoveries that were made, and six articles by the Preliminary Examination subteams. Each subteam focussed on different kinds of analysis of the samples: mineralogy/petrology, cratering, organics, bulk chemistry, isotopes, and optical and infrared spectroscopy.
同样，在部分来自全球近200名科学家们近一年的热切努力下，对星尘号收集到的彗星尘埃（星尘号的另一项任务）的首份分析报告将在下周的《科学》杂志上刊出。会有7篇论文：此项任务以及激动人心的发现概要，和6篇初步考察分组的文章。每一个分组专注于对样品不同方式的分析：矿物/岩石学、弹坑学、有机的、本体化学、同位素、光学和红外光谱学（部分专业名词不知对否）。

The scientists, including us at Berkeley, are now busily preparing longer, specialized papers for a special issue (or two!) of Meteoritics and Planetary Science. We will be posting overviews of the science results here, which can be read by non-specialists after the issue is released.
包括我们在内的科学家现在正准备长篇专门的文集有关一个（或两个）陨石学和行星科学的特别问题。我们会在这里发布该科学结论的概要，在问题发表后方便那些非专业人士阅读。

We thank you sincerely for your patience with Stardust@home during the last few weeks. Although we have been making steady progress, we have just been overwhelmed by the work required for the preparation of the cometary papers. These papers were a contractual obligation to NASA, and so they had to be finished quickly. Now that the papers are going out, we are really looking forward to concentrating on finding the interstellar dust!
我们诚挚的感谢您在过去的几周里参与 Stardust@home 虽然我们曾稳步的前进，我们还是被准备彗星尘埃论文的工作压垮了。这些论文是同 NASA 间的契约义务，所以要尽快完成。现在这些论文都完了，我们非常期待将注意力集中到星际尘埃上！

Dec 23, 2006

First results from the analysis of cometary dust from Stardust reported in Science

The results from the first analyses of cometary dust collected by Stardust and returned to earth have been reported in the journal Science , in seven landmark papers. There are nearly 200 co-authors on these papers -- this was a truly massive effort. We at Berkeley have been intensely engaged in this effort, both in preparing samples of cometary dust for distribution to our colleagues around the world, and in analyzing cometary dust at the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Zack Gainsforth will be summarizing each of the science papers in turn over the next weeks -- the first installment on the so-called "bulk chemistry" paper, has been posted on the forum.

2006/12/23
发表在《科学》杂志，关于彗星尘埃的首份分析结果《星尘报告》
彗星尘埃的首份分析结果已经在《科学》上报道，共计7篇里程碑式的论文。这些论文有近200位合著者——这份成就够重的。我们在伯克利也曾满怀热情地为这一成果忙碌，包括为来自各地的同行准备、分发彗星尘埃样品，以及用劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室的“先进光源”对尘埃进行分析。
Zack Gainsforth 会在接下来的几周里依次对每一篇论文进行总结——[url=http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1568]第一部分[/url]分已经在论坛发布。

[color=Red]我会抽时间翻译的，敬请关注！Orz[/color]

Jan 29, 2007
Thank you for your patience since our last news update. Although it might have
seemed that way, we haven't been asleep. In fact, we've been incredibly busy with Stardust@home: reviewing events, reviewing candidate movies, rescanning previous tiles, attending conferences presenting papers and talks, and many other fun distractions.

Good news: today we posted updates on more than 1200 candidates that we've reviewed by hand from among those that you have identified. We're still working hard on reviewing more, and we will post updates in smaller, more frequent increments than we've been doing so far.

Check your MyEvents page!

More updates to come soon...

2007年1月29日
感谢大家自从上次新闻更新后的耐心等待。虽然看上去我们似乎睡着了，实际上我们异常的忙碌：复查事件，复查候选片子，重新扫描以前的凝胶块，专注于会议报告和演讲，以及许多别的有趣活动。
好消息：今天我们发布了对超过1200个候选者的更新，都是诸位识别出的由我们人工检查过。我们仍在努力复查更多，并且会比之前有小量更多频率的更新。
检查你的 “MyEvents” 页面！
随后有更多更新.....

[[i] Last edited by Rojer on 2007-2-1 at 12:17 [/i]]

Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 2:49 pm
Results from the Foil Unfolding Tests
箔片反卷试验结果

As was discussed in earlier updates, we have been conducting tests to determine if it will be feasible to fold back the aluminum foils on the backside of the Interstellar Dust Collector. The reason we want to be able to do this is so that we can better scan the collector with light being transmitted directly through the backside rather than shining light through the top and reflecting it back up with a mirror. This will also allow us to make scans of candidate fields of view at higher magnification (25x or even 50x rather than the 10x optics currently used).
如同在先前的更新中讨论的，我们一直在做星尘收集器背部铝片后折的可行性试验。我们想这么做的原因是想要用从背部过来的透射光而不是从顶上照过来并被镜子反射回去的光来更好的扫描收集器。这么做也能让我们用更高的放大率（25X或更高的50X而不是现在用的10X）来扫描候选的视场。

The major concern with folding back the foils is that the tiles might shift as a result, causing us to lose information about the direction from which any discovered particles came. The aerogel collector was oriented during flight to point directly into the uncoming stream of interstellar dust particles. So the interstellar dust particles should impact the top of the aerogel at an angle of 90 degrees to the surface (straight in).
后折箔片最关键的是凝胶块可能会移动，导致那些被发现的颗粒是从哪个方向来的信息丢失。凝胶收集器在飞行中被引导直接指向星际尘埃流。所以星际尘埃颗粒会以90度角撞击其顶部表面（垂直进入）。

After tests were done with the flight spare collector, showing minimal shifting or tilting, a test was done on the real thing (tile I027). The amount of tilt measured for this tile was as much as 10 times larger than on the flight spare. The overall shift of tilt measured was about 2 degrees.
对飞行备用收集器作的试验表现了最小限度的移动和倾斜，之后对 I027 凝胶块作了一次试验。测量到的凝胶块总倾斜度是备件的10倍。测量到的倾斜的总移动约有2度。

This isn't terrible news, however. The collector pointing was not exact for the two collection periods during space flight and there is some natural spread expected in the directions of the oncoming dust particles. Overall, the expected minimum spread in possible impact angles is 10 degrees. So a 2 degree shift in the tile is not too bad.
不过，这不是可怕的消息。收集器的指向在太空飞行期间的两个收集周期里并不精确，并且在尘埃颗粒飞来的方向上还存在一些可预期的自然扩展。总归，预期的可能撞击角度最小扩展是10度，所以凝胶块2度的偏移还不坏。

Right now, the curator of the collector is deciding if this acceptable to carry on and begin unfolding more tiles, or if it should be discussed further by CAPTEM.
现在，收集器的主管正在决定这是否可以接受并开始翻转更多的凝胶块，或是需要 CAPTEM 进一步的讨论。

The images taken on tile I027 using transmitted light at 25x magnification are of superb quality. There are no strange optical effects at the edges as had been seen using reflected light. The team feels that this is definitely the way to go forward with rescanning fields of view that had bad focus and to look at individual candidates in more detail.
对 I027 凝胶块采用透射光在25X放大率下拍摄的图像质量相当好。在边缘处没有那种用反射光时曾看到的奇怪光学效应。小组觉得干脆就这么重扫描聚焦不好的视场以及用更多细节观察单独的候选视场。


[img]http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/images/Feb14UpdateFig1.jpg[/img]
This is an image of the upper left corner of the collector before the foils were folded back on I027.
这是一张在I027翻转箔片前收集器左上角的照片。

Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2007 12:39 pm

Following the update from yesterday, Mike Zolensky, the Stardust curator, has approved further foil unfolding. We'll next unfold the foils behind tile #31.

Stay tuned!

接着昨天的更新，“星尘”的主管 Mike Zolensky 批准了进行更多的箔片反卷。我们接下来要反卷#31凝胶块的箔片。
别换台哦！

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2007 10:45 am
[url]http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/forum/viewtopic.php?p=12974[/url]


During the week of March 12th, most of the Stardust@home team were in Houston for the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. Dr. Westphal also stayed for the CAPTEM meeting.
从3月12日开始的这一周里，Stardust@home 小组的多数成员都在参加休斯敦召开的月球与行星科学会议。Westphal 博士还在 CAPTEM（Curation and Analysis Planning Team for Extraterrestrial Materials） 的会议中。

Dr. Westphal presented the latest from the Stardust@home project. This generated intense interest and excitement: people were very impressed with the dedication and hard work of the roughly 23,000 "dusters" -- you have collectively searched nearly 40,000,000 images. Even more important than this is the amazing sensitivity of dusters to small tracks -- roughly 75% of the smallest calibration tracks are found by dusters. Since we need only about 10% to identify a track, dusters are more than seven times more efficient than they need to be! Naturally, there was also intense interest in the several dozen candidate interstellar dust tracks that we have found so far. We emphasize that we don't know what these are -- at this point they are simply "features of interest."
Westphal 博士介绍了 Stardust@home 的最新情况。这使人们产生了极大的兴趣和兴奋：人们对这大约23000“搜尘者”——也就是你们搜索了近4千万的图像——的贡献和辛勤的劳动印象非常深刻。比这更重要的是搜尘者对小轨迹令人吃惊的敏感度——粗略的说75%的最小校准轨迹都被搜索者发现了。而我们只需要10%来识别一个轨迹，搜尘者的效率比我们希望的高出了7倍还多。自然的，人们对我们现今所找到的几十个星际尘埃的候选者同样有着强烈的兴趣。要强调的是我们不知道这些是什么——此刻它们只不过是“有趣的特征”。

There was considerable discussion about the next steps in determining whether or not any of these candidates are indeed interstellar tracks. It has become clear that before any further progress can be made, these tracks must be extracted from the collector for analysis. We learned from the Stardust cometary collector tray that it is very difficult to get much information about tracks while they are still in the tray. The Berkeley group proposed an approach that we hoped would address some of the concerns of previously considered approaches. The idea is to use a micromanipulator mounted on the side of the Stardust interstellar collector tray to extract keystones (tiny wedge-shaped sections of aerogel surrounding a track) directly from aerogel tiles while still in the tray. This eliminates the need to remove entire tiles from the tray, which is probably risky. It also removes concern from having to mount a micromanipulator over the tray, since it could shed particles during extraction.
对下一步确定任何一个候选者是否真是星际尘埃轨迹有相当多的讨论。有一点已经逐渐清晰，在做任何进一步的处理之前这些轨迹必须从收集器中取出进行分析。我们从“星尘”号彗星收集碟所学到的适当这些轨迹还在碟子里的时候要获取轨迹的更多信息是非常困难的。伯克利的小组提出了一种途径，也就是我希望提出的涉及先前所考虑的一些方法。想法就是用安置在星尘收集盘边缘的一台显微操作设备从还待在盘中的凝胶块里直接直接提取关键部分（一小块围绕着一个轨迹的楔形凝胶）。这样做就可以不必将整块凝胶从盘中取出，因为那样做可能会有风险。同时也不必考虑在整个收集盘上面安置显微操作机所带来的在抽取过程中有颗粒脱落的问题。

The Cosmic Dust Laboratory will be shut down to interstellar tray scanning for about two months starting next week to catch up on allocations of interplanetary dust particles (IDPs). During this time, we will modify the scanning system to accommodate a micromanipulator -- the main job is machining a new mounting plate for the interstellar tray -- then we will practice doing extractions of ''picokeystones'' on the Stardust interstellar flight spare tray. These will enable us to image the tracks, and determine trajectories. The next steps will depend on what we find!
从下周开始彗星尘埃实验室将关闭星际盘的扫描大约两个月，以尽快分配太阳系尘埃颗粒（IDPs）。在此期间，我们将调整扫描系统来适应显微操作机——主要的工作是为星际盘加工一个新的安装板，随后我们会在“星尘”号星际飞行备用件上实际操作对“微楔”的提取。这将使我们能够描绘轨迹并确定其弹道。下一步骤将依赖于我们发现了什么！

While scanning in Houston is shut down we will be uploading high magnification movies from several tiles for searching in the VM. We will also be uploading new calibration movies to go along with these new movies.
在休斯敦的扫描停止期间我们会把一些块儿的高放大倍数影片上传供VM搜索。我们还会上传与新影片相应的新校准影片。

[img]http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/images/comet-keystone.jpg[/img]
Extraction at Berkeley of a keystone from a tile on the Stardust cometary dust collector.
在伯克利进行的从“星尘”号彗星尘埃收集器中提取楔石。

[img]http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/images/picokeystone.jpg[/img]
A tiny particle track (from a particle with a mass of only about a picogram, one trillionth of a gram) extracted in a "picokeystone" (a little keystone on a bigger keystone).
从微楔石中提取的一个微小颗粒（质量大约只有一皮克，万亿分之一克）轨迹

[img]http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/images/SEMPico1004.jpg[/img]
View of a picogram particle track in a picokeystone in a Scanning Electron Microscope (photo credit: Giles Graham, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
扫描电镜下微楔石中的一个皮克颗粒轨迹(图片编辑: Giles Graham, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)

[[i] 本帖最后由 Rojer 于 2007-6-12 10:16 编辑 [/i]]

Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2007 5:47 pm    Post subject: Update: 08 Jun 2007 - Extraction Tests at JSC
[url]http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1826[/url]

As we mentioned in the March 27th Update we are planning to extract candidate tracks identified by Stardust@home volunteers from the aerogel collector directly for analysis.
如同在3月27日的更新中提到的我们正在计划从宁教授机器中提取出由志愿者识别出的轨迹直接用于分析。

We've just completed a round of testing our extraction equipment on the Stardust interstellar flight spare tray (a back-up tray manufactured for the Stardust mission just in case something went wrong with the first tray before launch).
我们刚在飞行备用件（一个备份的盘如果前一个在发射前出了问题就用它替换）上完成一轮对我们的提取设备的测试。

Last week, Stardust@home team member Zach Gainsforth traveled to the cosmic dust lab facilities at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas to practice extractions from the collector. The process involved mounting and controlling a micromanipulator to the side of the collector tray.
上周 Stardust@home 小组成员 Zach Gainsforth 到了设在休斯敦约翰逊空间中心的宇宙尘埃实验室进行提取实践。过程包括在收集盘的边上安装及控制一台显微操纵器。

The micromanipulator holds and controls an armature that stretches out over the tray. The armature holds a superfine glass needle that is used to perforate the aerogel into the shape of a keystone. The micromanipulator has to control the armature to a precision smaller than a micron. The images below shows the set-up.
显微操纵器有一个伸到收集盘上方的支架，支架上有一枚十分精细的玻璃针，用以将凝胶打孔成楔石的样子。显微操纵器对支架的控制精度必须小于一微米。下图显示了安放情况。

[img]http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/images/SAH-Extractor-Front_s.jpg[/img]
注：micromanipulator 微操纵器
armature 支架
flight spare collector 备用收集器

[img]http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/images/SAH-Extractor-Side_s.jpg[/img]
注：Yuor eyes for the last year...  过去一年里这就是你的眼睛
Zack Zack 这小子

Note in the image above that the microscope we used in the tests is the same one that has been used to scan the actual interstellar dust tray.
注意上图中我们用于实验的显微镜和扫描实际的星际尘埃盘的是同一个。

One concern was that because the armature needed to be so long there might be significant vibrations in it that would make controlling it to the needed precision impossible. Luckily, this was not the case. The tests showed vibrations to not be a problem.
我们担心的一点是由于支架必须要这么长，可能产生显著的颤动，这可能使控制其达到要求的精度成为不可能。

The needle used is glass, and it is made so that its width at the tip is smaller than a micron. That is very sharp!
探针是用玻璃做的，它尖端的宽度不到一微米，非常锐利！

[img]http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/images/Needle-ZoomIn_s.jpg[/img]
注：Needle 探针

The needle cuts a wedge-shaped piece of aerogel, that we call a keystone, with the particle track contained at one corner. Holes are cut from the keystone that are used to insert microforks that pull the keystone out of the aerogel tile and then are used to hold it in all further analysis. For tracks as small as those produced by interstellar dust particles we further excavate a smaller wedge at the corner of the keystone that we call a picokeystone. Having less aerogel surrounding the track makes analysis easier.
探针切出一片V形的在一角带有粒子轨迹的凝胶，我们称为楔石。在楔石上打孔用以插入将从凝胶块中拔出的微叉子，叉子在随后所有进一步分析中还作为楔石的持柄。由于轨迹同产生它们的星际尘埃一样小，我们进一步在楔石的角上挖出一个更小的V形，称为微楔石。这样轨迹周围的凝胶就比较少便于分析。

[img]http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/images/picokeystone_s.jpg[/img]
注：picokeystone 微楔石
interstellar dust particle track 星际尘埃颗粒轨迹
holes for microfork 叉子洞
Keystone 楔石

During the tests we did not successfully extract any picokeystones. However, as a result of the tests, we are now confident that we will be able to do so successfully with only a little further development.
在测试期间我们没有成功的提取出一块微楔石。不过，测试结果我们确信只需做一点改进就能成功。

Stay tuned!
别换台哦！

[[i] 本帖最后由 Rojer 于 2007-6-12 10:06 编辑 [/i]]

July 19, 2007

Site Offline

The entire Space Sciences Lab will have an electrical shutdown, this weekend. Therefor Stardust@home will be offline from Friday July 21st 3pm to Monday July 23rd 9am Pacific Time.

Sorry for the inconvenience

2007年7月19日
网站离线
整个空间科学实验室将在本周末断电。因此Stardusr@home将从太平洋时间21日周五3pm到23日周一9am关闭。

Posted: Tue Jul 24, 2007 9:36 am
2007年7月24日 9：36am

We are announcing the beginning of an exciting second phase of the Stardust@home search. The Stardust@home volunteers have been incredibly successful at finding small, subtle features. We are now doubling the resolution of the focus movies. A whole new cosmic dust hunt will be on!
我们宣布第二阶段 Stardust@home 搜索开始了。Stardust@home 的志愿者在发现微小、微妙的特征方面惊人的成功。我们将焦点影片的解析度提升了一倍。一个全新的宇宙尘埃搜索即将展开！

After 11 months of diligent searching by thousands of volunteers we have identified several dozen candidate interstellar dust particles. We emphasize that at this time these are still only candidates; some, all, or none of these may be interstellar dust particles. We are carrying out a careful process of extracting these candidate particles at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. The pace of this process is slow and careful because this is an absolutely unique, practically irreplaceable set of samples. We must do it right the first time.
经过数千志愿者11个月细致的搜索后我们确定了数十个星际尘埃的候选者。需要强调的是当前这些仍然只是候选者；其中的一些、全部或没有一个可能会是星际尘埃颗粒。我们正在休斯敦的 NASA 约翰逊宇航中心小心的执行取出这些候选者处理工作。此项过程的步伐是缓慢而小心的，因为这绝对是独一无二、事实上是无可替代的一批样本。第一次一定要成功。

We halted the scanning of the Stardust interstellar dust tray in Houston a couple of months ago, with about one-third of the tray scanned. We did this so that the lab where the interstellar dust tray is being scanned, the so-called “Cosmic Dust Lab” at Johnson Space Center, could be used for its other purpose of processing requests for Cosmic Dust Particles. We are using this temporary hold up in scanning as an opportunity to install and test new hardware on the microscope that will enable us to extract candidates from the aerogel for analysis.
两个月前我们暂停了对休斯敦的“星尘”星际尘埃盘的扫描，收集盘已经有三分之一被扫描。之所以这么做是要将这个地方——也就是休斯敦宇航中心“宇宙尘埃实验室”腾出来用于别的[url=http://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/dust/index.cfm]宇宙尘埃[/url]处理的要求。利用扫描暂停的机会我们安装、测试了显微镜上的新设备，它将使我们能把候选者从凝胶中取出进行分析。

Many of the candidate tracks discovered by the dusters are incredibly subtle; much more subtle than we had originally expected ("expect the unexpected"). Yet, the Stardust@home volunteers have proved to be incredibly sensitive to detecting them. We suspect that there might be many more subtle features in the full resolution data waiting to be discovered.
许多由“搜尘者”发现的候选轨迹都异常的细微：比我们最初期望的（意想不到啊）要细微的多。证明 Stardust@home 的志愿者对它们的搜索是令人难以置信的敏感。我们猜测在全解析度的数据中应该会有更多细微的特征等着被发现。

The focus movies that dusters have been scanning using the Virtual Microscope (VM) during this past first phase of Stardust@home are highly compressed because of bandwidth limitations. But the original scan data were taken at much higher resolution. We cannot send the original data out on the VM because of their large size (each full resolution focus movie is about 30Mb). So, we are bringing the full-resolution movie data out of the archives, dividing each into four separate fields of view, compressing these for searching on the VM, and uploading these movies to Amazon S3, which is hosting the Stardust@home images. This processing essentially doubles the magnification and the spatial resolution. The images will look different than they did before because we are now approaching the resolution limit (the “diffraction limit”) of the microscope.
由于带宽的限制，搜尘者们在过去的第一阶段中使用VM搜索的是高度压缩过的图。原始的扫描数据有着非常高的清晰度。我们不能在VM上发送原始数据是因为其体积庞大（一个全解析度焦点影片大约30Mb）。所以，我们将全解析度影片数据制成档案，把每一个视场分成4部分，将其压缩以适合在VM上搜索，并将这些影片上传到 AmazonS3 上。这一处理过程本质上使放大率和空间分辨率加倍。图片看上去会与处理前有不同，因为我们面临显微镜分辨率的极限(衍射极限）。

In Stardust@home Phase 2, the VM will display high resolution scans from the first third of the collector tray and new low resolution scans (rescans or fixes of corrupted data). The scale bar in the VM will indicate whether it is displaying high or lower resolution movies. The original lower resolution movies will be retired and archived. There will be new calibration movies, new tutorial movies, and pages displaying the candidates found in both Phases 1 and 2 for reference. The scores, rankings and candidate lists from Phase 1 will be frozen, preserved, and displayed on the Website. We will give all the volunteers a fresh start and invite new volunteers to continue to join the search. For Phase 2, everyone will begin with a clean slate for score and ranking and an equal chance at discovering yet more candidate stardust tracks.
在 Stardust@home 第二阶段，VM 将展示这三分之一收集盘的高清晰扫描和新的低清晰度扫描（重扫或修正破坏的数据）。VM 中的比例尺将标示出显示的是高或低清晰度的影片。原先的低清晰度影片将退役并存档。将会有新的校正影片、新的指南影片和显示阶段1、阶段2中候选者的页面。阶段1的分数、排名和候选者名单将被冻结、保存，显示在网站上。我们将给志愿者们一个新的起点并邀请新的志愿者继续加入到搜索中来。阶段2，每个人都将从干净的分数、排名记录开始，在发现更多候选轨迹时有一个公平的机会。

The Phase 2 calibration movies will be much more challenging than those of Phase 1, because they are made using one of the more subtle actual candidate tracks. So, don't expect Phase 2 to be the same old data and the same old search. You will probably have lower sensitivity and specificity scores than you had in Phase 1. We are doing this on purpose. We were amazed at how good the dusters have been during Phase 1 at finding even the smallest calibration tracks, but it meant that we could not really determine our detection threshold. Now some calibration tracks really will be almost invisible!
阶段2中的校准影片会比阶段1更具挑战性，因为它们是由一个比较细微的真实候选轨迹作的。所以别期望阶段2还是旧的数据。你可能得到比阶段1中要低得敏感度和专一度。这么做是有目的的。我们吃惊的发现阶段1中的搜尘者在发现最微小候选轨迹方面做得太好了，但这也意味着我们无法真正的测定察觉域值。现在某些校准轨迹真的会几乎看不到！

Before we can launch Phase 2 we will need to disable the VM for up to 2 weeks while we transfer new databases and put the new VM code in place. Our plan is to close down the VM within a window between July 26-Aug 9. The forums and the rest of the website will remain open during the transition.
在启动阶段2之前需要停止 VM 2周，其间我们要转换新的数据库并替换新的 VM 代码。计划在7月26-8月9号关闭 VM。论坛和网站的其它部分在转换其间保持开放。

One other thing that we will be doing during the shutdown is correcting some people’s Phase 1 scores. Some dusters told us on the forum about scoring problems that resulted people’s scores being slightly lower than they should have been. We will be correcting this problem. Please do not expect a big increase in your Phase 1 score, however.
在关闭其间要做的另一件事就是修正一些人阶段1的分数。一些搜索者在论坛报告计分问题导致他们的分数稍低于实际。我们会修正这一问题。但是不要期望你阶段1的分数会有大的增长。

We thank you all for your amazing contributions to Stardust@home, and we look forward to the next phase of this historic project. Your talent and dedication to this project have been truly impressive. We couldn’t do it without you!
感谢你们全体为 Stardust@home 所作的令人惊异贡献，并对这一历史性项目的下一阶段有同样期盼。你们的才干和对项目的贡献实在是令人难忘。没有你们我们做不到！

-The Stardust@home Team

Site Maintenance Notice. August 6th 11:50am PDT

You are seeing this page because we have temporarily taken Stardust@home offline while we perform essential maintenance in preparation for our Phase 2 interstellar dust search.

服务器离线了，开始准备第二期的星尘了~

周五恢复，当然我们要等到周六了

hmmmmm.  I am ready! I have a vacation just the right time!^_^