New to my blog? You can drop in here first to learn more about me and the blog: https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/p/welcome-to-my-astronomy-and.html
As the blog grows, I want it to stay easy to navigate. To help with that, I’ve put together a simple guide that explains how everything is arranged and how to find things quickly:
You’ll also see labels, categories, and series developing over time so you can follow particular themes - whether that’s equipment, observing sessions, learning logs, or location-based posts. Anyway, welcome and enjoy. I hope ytou find something useful. Steve
If you have read previous posts recently, you will know that I am participating in a citizen science project "Cosmic Dust in the City Project" - run by The University of Plymouth.
You can read previous posts here: https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2026/05/cosmic-dust-in-city-project-university.html
And find out about the project here: https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/research/public-engagement-at-plymouth/cosmic-dust-in-the-city
This was the kit I received from the University a few days ago - very simple equipment but a comprehensive approach and methodology.
Well today, here was my first go!
My first mistake: over-ambition and over-zealousness!
This was just a 30cm length worth of my guttering clear out!
Following the instruction card step-by-step, I mixed the guttering contents in water and gave it a good stirring.
After allowing material to mix and then settle, I scooped off all the floating debris
Time for some 0.5mm diameter sieve action
Well this was the stuff that got caught by the sieve
What then followed was thirty minutes or so of gently sieving out the water mixture and then doing what can only be described as panning for gold! I used two old ice cream tubs to gently siphon off the ater and fine floating material using a panning motion until I was left with the heavy particles whicvh had made it through the sieve and sunk to the bottom
here are a few more initisal mistakes. Firstly I followed the instructions about drying out the wet sediment on paper. However, they didn't specify what paper type! paper towel seemed a good idea at the time but.......on second thoughts! In addition, there is sooooo much sediment....which has heaped and so will take some drying out.
I remember in Prof. Steve's live teams meeting saying to us all - if you have lots of material - its going wrong somewhere! Basically, 99.999999999% of this stuff will be iron based roofing material!
I did go off piste with this sample. My gutter material was so dry that there was lots of very fine dust left in the gutter and so I ran the bagged magnet over that and to my surprise lots got picked up that way as well! I won't submit this as it wasnt collected properly; and also the particle sizes are very varied - some well over 0.5 mm. I think a friend has a microscope and I might try and borrow it and see what I have got though - curiosity!
Once the wet stuff has dried out - I will have a go at doing the doubloe bag magnet trick with that and that will be the sample I send back to the university.
This citizen science stuff is exciting. It may take a few goes to perfect the technique though.
