November brings the Leonid meteors each year. It is usually one of the most active of the meteor showers. The last several years have been very active indeed; with many of us seeing the finest displays of our lives. This year a more than normal emphasis was made that it would be the last such fine Leonid show for many decades. Less emphatic warnings have been made during the last few years but the meteors failed to hear those reports and arrived anyway. I guess we will see next year if we have truly moved beyond the dense regions of the swarm that we have been hitting so well recently.

I mentioned last month that I hoped to get some time to do more work with the Alamo Breccia specimens we brought back from vacation. Well, I did steal time to cut and lap some pieces. It is really beautiful material. The big surprise for me came though when I put them under my black light as I often do with rocks I come home with. I sure did not expect the bright fluorescence that I saw. You will not be able to see it in all its glory in the accompanying photo. (It is not easy to take pictures of fluorescence with a digital camera. I will have to experiment with techniques for that as well. I just love a new photographic challenge.) But, you May get an idea of how nice it looked.

In our continuing attempt to make the back issues as accessible as possible there is now an index of all articles by each contributor. You can find this link   Article Index   in the header above.

If you know the topic or even just who wrote it, this should make it easier to reread articles.

If this is your first visit to Meteorite Times be sure to take a look at the wonderful material we have offered during this year. Who knows what the coming year will bring? But, you can be sure that it will be exciting.

Till next year, jpt