Interstellar Meteors

Interstellar dust (ISD) particles larger than about 1 mu m (4 x 10(-12) g) can penetrate freely into the inner solar system where, in the event of Earth impact, they can be accessed by the detection of the plasma and excited species created when the particles ablate in the Earth's atmosphere. The ablation process and current experimental techniques available for plasma and excitation detection mean that the particle size regime accessible from ground-based sensing is much larger than can be sampled from space-craft. However, the much larger collecting area provided by the atmosphere in the meteor mode results in comparable detection statistics for the two techniques.The value of this Earth based probing of interstellar dust lies in the ability to provide quality dynamical characteristics: the velocity information allows the recovery of the ISD pre-solar system encounter trajectories. This paper provides an overview of experimental techniques and the attempts to map the galactic sources of interstellar dust.