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Bill Cassidy and the Campo del Cielo Strewn Field (1960′s)

Bill Cassidy shares some of his pictures from the Campo del Cielo strewn field taken in the 1960’s.

 

 

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FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: Ted Bunch -- Ramon (?) -- Luisa Villar -- Dan Milton -- Bill Cassidy -- Truman Kohman


 

During a trip to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania last week, I stopped-in at University of Pitt to pay a visit to Professor Emeritus Bill Cassidy. It was a treat to talk to him about his work in the early days with the Japanese in Antarctica. But it was an added treat when Bill started to discuss his even earlier work in the Southern Hemisphere – his collaboration with the Argentine researchers at the Campo del Cielo strewn field in the 1960s. The results of all of this field work are well-published. I’ve listed them below at the end of this article under “Academic References”. You can find these on-line and published in the “Supplement” issue (Vol. 45, 2010 July) of the Meteoritical Society journal, Meteoritics & Planetary Sciences (M&PS).

Here are some images of pictures taken “from the field” which Bill Cassidy shared with me:

Copyright©William Cassidy

Copyright©William Cassidy
Argentinian field workers dragging up a large Campo del Cielo iron meteorite from a trench in "Crater No. 6"
Copyright©William Cassidy
A unique view of an iron meteorite being extracted from a trench which has exposed a penetration funnel.
Copyright©William Cassidy
A crane pulls up a monster Campo del Cielo iron meteorite from "Crater No. 13"


Copyright©William Cassidy
This was supposed to be a "posed picture" of the recovered meteorite with the mayor of the local village in the Campo del Cielo strewn field, but several families with their children arrived at the same time.
Bill Cassidy on the left and the author on the right.
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Myself looking at the Bill Cassidy Campo iron meteorite in a wooden crate.
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A closer look at the iron meteorite that Bill Cassidy and team recovered at the Campo del Cielo crater field

 

I wish I could have spent more time talking with Bill Cassidy, but I had pressing family matters to attend, and Bill had to return to his current project, which is no surprise that the topic is “impact-stressed” iron meteorites from the craters in the Campo del Cielo strewn field in Argentina.

References:

• Link to the website with an abstract for the referenced journal: Meteorites and Craters of Campo del Cielo, Argentina
interscience.wiley.com

  • (pp. 1055-1064)
    William A. Cassidy, Luisa M. Villar, Theodore E. Bunch, Truman P. Kohman, Daniel J. Milton
    Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1716081

• Link to a website with a reprint of Buchwald’s HISTORY AND SCIENCE OF THE CAMPO DEL CIELO METEORITE

The website “quotes” from:

The Handbook of Iron Meteorites
Their History, Distribution, Composition and Structure
Volume 2
by Vagn F. Buchwald

Department of Metallury, Technical University, Lyngby, Denmark
Published for the Center for Meteorite Studies, Arizona State University
By the University of California Press
Berkeley • Los Angeles • London

 

 

Academic References:

1. Bunch, T. E., Cassidy, W. A., Impact-induced deformation in Campo del Cielo meteorite. French, B.M. and Short, N.M., eds., Shock Metamorphism of Natural Materials, Mono Book Corp., Baltimore, MD, pp. 601-612. 1968.
2. Cassidy W.A., Renard, M. L., Discovering research value in the Campo del Cielo, Argentina, meteorite craters. Meteoritics & Planetary Science, v. 31, pp. 433-448. 1996.
3. Cassidy, W. A., Wright, S. P., Small impact craters in Argentine loess: A step-up from modeling experiments, Impact Cratering Workshop, pp. 8004. 2003.
4. Cassidy, W. A., Field investigations at Campo Del Cielo, Argentina. Unpublished Research Proposal, University of Pittsburgh, 31 p. 1973.
5. Cassidy, W. A., A small meteorite crater: Structural details. Journal of Geophysical Research, v. 76, pp. 3896-3912. 1971.
6. Cassidy, W. A., Meteorite impact craters at Campo del Cielo, Argentina. French, B.M. and Short, N.M., eds., Shock Metamorphism of Natural Materials, Mono Book Corp., Baltimore, MD, pp. 117-128. 1968.
7. Cassidy, W. A., Villar, L.M., Bunch, T.E., Kohman, T.P. and Milton,D.J., Meteorites and craters of Campo del Cielo, Argentina. Science, v. 149, pp. 1055-1064. 1965.
8. Traub, S. G., Cassidy, W. A., Alteration of Campo Del Cielo soil by meteorite impact: Implications for the surface of Mars (abstract). Lunar and Planatary Science XX, pp. 1128-1129. 1989.

 

My previous articles can be found *HERE*

For for more information, please contact me by email: Bolide*chaser

Robert Verish

Robert Verish

Bob is a retired aerospace engineer living in Southern California, and has been recovering meteorites from the Southwest U.S. Deserts since 1995.
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