November 2024 -

Your Meteorites Deserve the Affordable Magic of Digital Microscopes!

By Martin Horejsi | November 1, 2024 | Accretion Desk

In the old days, a high quality stereo microscope or dissecting scope was essential to take meteorite appreciation to the next level. Many of us were quick to attempt photography through the eyepiece, and when digital cameras reached sufficient megapixel number, a new photographic power was in the hands of the hobbyist. But today, a new visual superpower is

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Talking About Meteorites

By James Tobin | November 1, 2024 | Jim's Fragments

Over the many years that I have been a meteorite collector and in the meteorite business I have had the opportunity to speak to dozens of groups and tell the story of meteorites. I thought when I moved out of a large metropolitan area to a quiet retirement in the mountains that my speaking engagements would be rare for the

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Rantila, a Fluorescent Aubrite

By John Kashuba | November 1, 2024 | Micro Visions

In late September 2022 Michael Farmer posted that he was at the Munich show, Rantila (aubrite) was for sale and that it was fluorescent. With several quick emails I laid claim to a few samples. Aubrites, enstatite achondrites, are natural candidates for fluorescence because they are low in Fe. Iron tends to quench UV fluorescence. In Rantila the enstatite is

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Is Cat Mountain the standard for impact melts?

By Michael Kelly | November 1, 2024 | MeteorWriting

There are meteorites out there that set the bar. If you ask a meteorite collector to describe how nicely colored and translucent the olivines are in a new pallasite, they can compare it to those in Fukang or Esquel. But what do you compare an impact melt breccia to, that maybe has more in common visually to foundry slag than

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Stardust in Aqueously-altered Meteorites: studying presolar grains in Bennu’s analogue materials

By Lucas R. Smith | November 1, 2024 | IMCA Insights

Affiliation: Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, The University of Arizona, 1629 E University Blvd, Tucson, AZ 85721-0092, USA Presolar, or stardust, grains are small (typically nanometers to a few microns in diameter) amorphous or crystalline dust particles that condensed in the outflows of asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars and supernova explosions that predate the Sun. These grains were a part of

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X-ray Computed tomography for preliminary examination of Mars 2020 cached samples: testing the possible impact of ionizing radiation on Mars-relevant organic compounds.

By Linda Welzenbach | November 1, 2024 | IMCA Insights

The Mars 2020 rover mission is currently collecting and caching samples from the Martian surface for future retrieval and return to Earth. The return of those samples would present our first opportunity to analyze Mars samples with detailed knowledge of their geologic context. In addition, these samples could contain definitive information about the existence of past or present life on

X-ray Computed tomography for preliminary examination of Mars 2020 cached samples: testing the possible impact of ionizing radiation on Mars-relevant organic compounds. Read Post »