Well, I was surprised that I got so few guesses about the mystery meteorite pictured in last month’s article. But, I will share the results. There were two guesses and they were both that it is a Toluca slice. Well, I said I had a good idea of what I thought it was and as it happens that is what I think as well. There are some things that lead me to that conclusion. The slice that was so yellowed and old looking was shellac coated. That is not done too often nowadays. The meteorite had suffered from some exposure to moisture and it just had an old look about it. So guessing it was a generation old, what irons that look similar were available then. There are some but the most available with a name that might be confused with Odessa was Toluca. I wish there had been a Nininger or Huss number on it that would have made it even easier. But, then there would have been a huge group of people bidding on it. It remains a meteorite slice with no provenance. But is a very nice restored slice that will be a great source of pleasure.

I happened to be out with my camera when the Minuteman Three launch took place some days ago so even though it is not really meteorite related I will share a photo of it and a photo of a Leonid train that has also been blown around a lot.
 

By this time next month Paul and I will have returned from vacation and have some stories to tell of our most recent adventure.

Like many of us who are in the meteorite community I receive samples for testing. I got a piece of what was believed to be tektite from Arizona. I was sure it was obsidian but looked forward to getting it in the mail. I hope we May be able to use it in our research project with Stephen Pierce (see his article in the "From the Lab" collumn) of obtaining absorption spectrographs of natural glasses and tektites. When it arrived, there was not the slightest chance that it was tektite glass. But even after sending a photograph of the material all frothed up from a flame test the finder said they would wait for more testing. I hope in the coming months we can work on describing how really unusual tektite glass is. And make clear how wide the gulf is between it and obsidian. Please be sure to visit Paul's article this month on tektites in "The Tektite of the Month" column. This first of two parts will begin the process of demonstrating the uniqueness of tektite glass.

Till next month, jpt