Stars in the Laboratory: Presolar Stardust in the Solar System

​Primitive meteorites and cometary dust particles contain preserved interstellar dust grains that predate the origin of the Solar System. These grains are recognized as pristine presolar stardust by large isotopic anomalies indicating that they originated in the outflows or explosions of evolved stars. They were witnesses to stellar, interstellar and protosolar environments and thus serve as probes of a wide array of astrophysical and cosmochemical processes. This talk will provide numerous examples of how presolar grains are identified, studied in the laboratory and used to gain important information about astrophysics with a focus on stellar nucleosynthesis and galactic chemical evolution.