An electron microscope image of a micron-sized silicon carbide, SiC, stardust grain (lower right) extracted from a primitive meteorite. The stardust grain is coated with meteoritic organics on the surface (dark gunk on the left side of the grain). Such grains formed more than 4.6 billion years ago in the cooling winds lost from the surface of low-mass carbon-rich stars near the end of their lives, typified here (upper left) by a Hubble Space Telescope image of the asymptotic giant branch star U Camelopardalis. Laboratory analysis of such tiny dust grains provides unique information on nuclear reactions in low-mass stars and …
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