About Meteorites
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Today CJ and I stopped over to visit Mike and Jane Gallant where we had the opportunity to slice and lightly polish some highly weathered, unclassified NWAs. I have numerous samples from two separate finds and we wanted to compare them. 
Below Mike is cutting a medium sized specimen. 
This is me polishing an endcut on Mike's homemade polishing wheel. WAY less work than my recent attempts to window a specimen by hand! Note the canister mounted at the rear of the wheel with a drip pipe for distilled water. Very cool setup.
The first cut is from the following 'parent' meteorite weighing about 140 grams [total weight after the cut]. Here's the parent; 
Below is the polished endcut showing fine veining. Note the lack of Fe-Ni flecks in this specimen. All the metal is veined. I suspect it is hematite that has 'invaded' the meteorite as it is not bright like Fe-Ni should be. There are also some chondrules apparent, but I could not capture them in this photo with the exception of one in the lower left. [Endcut weighs 24.9g] 
Next we cut a 340g NWA and the inside is quite different from the first specimen. It is full of Fe-Ni flecks. First, the parent meteorite, all ugly and covered in caliche; 
Then the 21g endcut showing lots of Fe-Ni flecks. Note also that the flecks are concentrated toward the center of the specimen. Mike surmised that weathering had caused the areas nearer the exterior to oxydize, leaving fewer flecks and showing some hematite invasion. There are many chondrules apparent in this specimen. 
All in all we had a great time cutting, polishing and talking meteorites. CJ and Mike's wife, Jane were there too, but CJ ran the camera and Jane was on the phone a lot so there are no pictures of them. |
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