We added a new weekly feature to the Hangouts. Each week a participant will give a brief report as we make 12 stops along a tour of our Solar System. The first ‘victim / volunteer’ was Ron Metchis who hit a home run with a “Tour Guide” approach to sell us timeshares on Kepler-10b. If you don’t know about Kepler-10b, watch and “like” this video. *Great job Ron!!
We deep-dive into a possible meteorite submitted by a YouTube viewer. Is it a meteorite or a meteorwrong? Watch a video of my initial assessment and hear the final answer. This one was professionally cut into a large end cut and about 7 slices.
Mike Kelly had a huge haul to show off this week! The haul included; a highly vesicular glass Henbury impactite from Australia, NWA 1912 a Mesosiderite-B2 (1 of 7 classified) with a very small TKW of just 13.5g, Guanaco an Iron, IIG (1 of 6 classified) from Chile, NWA 4360 a Rumuruti R3.6 subtype (1 of 4 classified) with only 309g TKW, Nadiabondi is an H5 witnessed fall from Burkina Faso with provenance back to Professor J Otto who did the mineralogy as listed in MetBull, NWA 032 a 1 of 19 classified Lunar Basalt (the youngest ever found ~2.8 Ga based on radiometric dating), and finally a really rare Shergottite with picritic basalt (ultramafic) characteristics. Mike hit a collection milestone with his 600th piece! It is a yet to be classified Eucrite from John Higgins. Congrats!!
Iron meteorites are classified by chemical composition and their different metallic crystalline structures. Last week Ron showed his Turgut (Iron-ung from Turkey) with the “finest octahedrite” pattern. This week he contrasts that with a remarkable 106g slice of NWA 11106 (Iron, IAB-MG octahedrite) with an extremely coarse grain (large crystals) he obtained from Mike Miller. I use my 871g thick wedge of Campo de Cielo to demonstrate that the crystal size can vary wildly on both sides of the same slice.
The Mars Perseverance Rover is set to descend and land on the surface of Mars in 8-days (on Feb 18th 2021). We watch and discuss a really cool landing site flyby of Jezero Crater produced by JPL. We plan to follow and provide updates of the two year long mission to search for proof of ancient life on the Red Planet.
Maxime Denoncin from Belgium shared more microscope pictures and video including an Aba Panu (L3 Nigeria witnessed fall from 2018) with a beautiful inclusion - a super cooled impact melt. He offers a detailed explanation of the Widmanstätten pattern in his Seymchan sample and the surprise he found on the slice. We also examined the ultra-black and glossy fusion crust on Gourara 003, my Eucrite-mmict classification. Photos: JaH 640 (LL5), NWA 3118 (CV3), Tarda (C2-ung), NWA 7325 pair (Achondrite-ung), JaH 900 (L5) – at 780g, this is Maxime’s largest collection item.
Marco Gaisser from Germany showed us his very first oriented meteorite, a complete 16g NWA heatshield Chondrite with a hard roll over lip. The next NWA Chondrite’s face is full of radial flow lines. But it is unusually flat in front and weights 277g. I loved his 535g oriented heatshield that again is just full of radial flow lines.
Andries Goedhart in the Netherlands focused on sharing some of his Carbonaceous meteorites and several ‘type namesakes’ with us. They are rare, old, hard to get, and mainly European meteorites. The chemical Group namesake falls are such scientifically different and important meteorites that a new Group of meteorites is created and named after them like Mighel (CM), Vigarano (CV), and Orgueil (CO).
Pat Brown showed us a NWA Chondrite with lots of regmaglypts, an Allende slice, and some electronic scale equipment. We discussed calibration weights. FREE book download recommendation: ‘The Buchwald Handbook of Iron Meteorites’ is at: [ Ссылка ]
I am Topher Spinnato, owner of Topherspin Meteorites LLC. I am an internationally trusted meteorite importer, collector, and dealer. I am a proud member of the International Meteorite Collector's Association (IMCA #6236) the Meteorite Education & Trade Society (METS #6236), and currently sit on the Board of Directors of the Meteorite Club (worldwide).
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