Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 February 2018
This is a description of the beginning of a systematic investigation into the optical properties of dust structures that are likely to be representative of interplanetary dust. I delineate the development of a physical dust model to parameterize the optically important characteristics of the dust. The result is a system with two refractive indexes in an aggregate structure of varying porosity - a challenging model for most current light scattering theories. Experimental data is needed to investigate the scattering by these structures and to test new theoretical solutions (e.g., Xu 1995) as they develop. I give a brief description of the new microwave analog scattering laboratory that has been developed for this purpose at the Laboratory for Astrophysics of the University of Florida's Astronomy Department. Finally, laboratory data is shown in support of dense aggregate models for interplanetary dust.