Others, like Bruce Draine of Princeton University, will study the size distribution and composition of the grains themselves.

Planetary theorists also have a second problem on their hands, thanks to work by Nikku Madhusudhan, an astrophysicist at Princeton University in New Jersey2.

It's the first attempt to sort astronomical data on this scale, says Princeton astrophysicist Robert Lupton, who oversaw data processing for the SDSS and is helping design the LSST.