Happy New Year
Previous “Bob’s Findings” Articles – Revisions and Updates.
Hello Year 2011! Goodbye Year 2010! The start of a new year gives all of us a chance to start anew. A chance to improve upon the previous year. Or, if the year 2010 was a particularly good year for you, then at least, the new year gives you a chance to extend your good fortune.
Looking forward to Year 2011 is all well and good, but in order to gauge “improvement” for the coming year, it requires that we look back and reflect upon the past Year 2010. For just as we sang on New Year’s Day, “… Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and times of auld lang syne?”, this is the time to think back to out past activities and to remember our old acquaintances, as well as, all of the new friendships that we made in 2010.
In this day and age of the Internet and Facebook, our “acquaintances” are very often virtual. But even though we are physically separated in distance from each other, none the less, we are all electronically connected now. Our most mundane daily activities are only a Twitter away from being shared with all of our “friends” and acquaintances on the social network.
So in this day of information overload, it’s hard NOT to gauge our past year’s activities and to make comparisons with prior years. And since most of the readers of this article consider themselves as “meteorite collectors”, it is hard not to judge and make comparisons based upon how many meteorite falls and finds have occurred over the past year, and have been made available for our collections.
So then, it should come as no surprise that the 2010 year-ending issue of Meteorite magazine carries an article by the editor, Derek Sears, entitled “The Meteorites of 2010! [See “References” below]
Keep in mind that this article only lists those meteorites “reported” in various Newsletters and Bulletins, and not necessarily “found” in year 2010. But it appears that 1,382 meteorites have been “reported” in 2010. Not going to attempt to compare this number to previous years, but only mention this number in order to set a baseline in our endeavor to improve upon this number in year 2011.
And to this end, in order to be able to gauge my contribution to the 2011 totals, I will now report on the number of meteorites that I “found” in year 2010.
You may remember that my January 2010 article (one year ago) was about a meteorite that was found on the last day of year 2009 and was possibly The Last Meteorite Found for Year 2009 (Maybe?) Well, obviously I can’t count that one in my total (although it will be “reported” in 2011), so I will start my total from that date onward.
 |  LV 121 (CK4) – all three (3) pieces together. |
The above two images are of my first meteorite find for 2010. Made a trip out to Lucerne Valley to check-out the “dry” lake to see if the lakebed surface was altered, after the winter storms passed through earlier (during the 2010 Tucson Show) . Improvement to the lakebed wasn’t readily apparent, so the question of whether my find was recently exhumed, or was just plain missed by a small army of meteorite-hunters, still remains unanswered. But, because of the manner in which I found this fragment “standing-up”, makes me want to vote for “recently exhumed”.
 Mifflin (L5) |
 Provisional name reserved (L6) |  Provisional name reserved (L6) |
It was exactly 1 month later when I made my 3rd find for the year 2010. Actually, it was 13 finds, but I count is as one find (being that they are all from the same strewn field) and it occurred over a 4-day trip to Nevada. This many finds was a bit of a surprise since we had already searched this area over a 5 year period. But again, during the previous winter, this drylake had a lot of standing water and experienced a lot of “resurfacing” of the lakebed. So, it shouldn’t have been that much of a “surprise”.
 |  |
A whole 5 months goes by before I make my next find. While staying over-night in Ely, we make a swing by Yelland Dry Lake just to see it first-hand. I had attempted to access this playa 3 years earlier but I had to turn back due to muddy conditions. So, I was more than curious to see this dry lakebed.
We were surprised that there were still dozens of (tiny) fragments to be found on the surface, considering all of the tire-tracks and the number of meteorite-hunters that had just searched this locality. Even more of a surprise to me was that I was able to find two fragments that were 31.4g and 47.8g respectively. Both of these are external fragments – exhibiting at least one surface that is relict fusion-crust – but have different weathering coloration/patina. The 31.4g one has the typical patina for the vast majority of fragments found at this locality, but the 47.8g one is a rare, black chondrite, yet I still think it is one of the H4 stones.
Total: If I can’t say that I found 4 meteorites in 2010, then at least, I should be able to say that I found meteorites at 4 localities.
Please, don’t make the mistake of construing my ‘full disclosure” as some form of bragging, because I know for a fact that many of my peers have done much better last year. If anything, I should be apologizing for having such a sub-par year. And now I have no excuse for not showing some improvement in 2011.
Over the past year, I’ve received various comments and suggestions about previous “Bob’s Findings” articles, which has prompted me to make various revisions and updates. And in conclusion, I would like to list those updated articles below:
Museum Takes Meteorite-Collecting Field Trip to – Superior Valley
This is the second update to this article in less than a year. The museum frequently changed the links to their webpages, and in fact, they finally ended-up removing all of their webpages relating to meteorites. So, with the permission of their webmaster, I archived the old, deleted webpages and images on my own server. I was then able to restore my November 2003 article.
The Rock Springs (L6) chondrite – a new Wyoming meteorite found by Dave Freeman!
Recently found the images for this article, after they had been missing for a few years, which allowed me to “restore” this article, one of the few web pages which documented this rare Wyoming find from 2003.
The Moss Meteorite (a slide-show on my summer vacation to Norway)
As fate would have it, my planned summer vacation to Norway coincided with the fall of the Moss (Norway) meteorite. I gladly modified my itinerary to include a side-trip to the Moss meteorite strewn field. This article was originally just an image gallery of my trip. Because I returned from Norway too late, my August 2006 article was postponed and wasn’t published as part of the August MeteoriteTimes.com, but I eventually placed my webpage on-line. The links to recent information about this important meteorite fall has been updated again.
Meteorite displays at the Griffith Observatory have REOPENED!
This November 2006 article was intended to focus on the various meteorite displays, and in particular the California Meteorite exhibit, on display at the newly remodeled Griffith Observatory here in Los Angeles. But as of the writing of that article, those exhibits were still “under construction”. Nevertheless, the Griffith Observatory was finally re-opened! And now that the final touches to the exhibits are finished, I made an update to this article. I replaced the “Slideshow” with an image gallery of these fabulous meteorite displays.
Sand Encrusted Stones of the NWA 869 Meteorite
Sand grains from the Sahara Desert are caliche-cemented to the exterior of unwashed chondritic stones of the NWA 869 meteorite. Many NWA 869 stones were hand-scrubbed to remove this caliche prior to being sold on the market. Most of these NWA 869 stones have retained some of these sand-grains still cemented within cracks on the exterior of these stones. It was subsequently observed that there was very little difference between these sand-grains and the sand-grains cemented in cracks on the exterior of a Bouse (L4-6) meteorite specimen. Recent discussions regarding the find locality for the Bouse meteorite has prompted me to update this November 2007, as well as the prior Bouse Meteorite articles.
REFERENCES:
The Meteorites of 2010, by Derek Sears, in
METEORITE – November 2010 Volume 16, No. 4
Author has listed the geographical distribution of meteorites as reported in the U.S. Antarctic Meteorite Newsletter, the Japanese Meteorite Newsletter, and the Meteoritical Bulletin during year 2010.
“The year 2010 saw 1382 new meteorites reported in the…”
My previous articles can be found *HERE*
