Meteorite 10

Thin section of a Meteorite... more

by - MicROCKScopica -

Title

Meteorite 10

Artist

- MicROCKScopica -

Medium

Photograph - Polarized Light Photomicrograph

Description

Thin section of a Meteorite

"There was a penetration of the light into solid substance so that I seemed to see into things, deep in...".
John Steinbeck was not thinking of rocks when he wrote this sentence in "Travels with Charley - In search of America". However, his feeling exactly reflects what people should think when looking at rock photomicrographs such as in this reportage on "Ocean Jasper".
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This isn’t a terrestrial rock, but a meteorite, kindly provided by the Museo di Scienze Planetarie della Provincia di Prato – Parsec, Italy, for a photomicrographic reportage. Meteorites are fundamental for understanding the origin of our planet. In particular chondritic meteorites (chondrites) are the most common type that falls to Earth, and are also among the oldest known material in the solar system, dated at 4,56 billion years ago.

Chondrites take their name by the abundance of spherical particles, the chondrules, which were small bubbles of molten rock. These bubbles solidified crystallizing in various ways, giving rise to the different textures that can be observed in chondrules. Here we see the carbonaceous chondrite NWA 2180, recovered in Morocco in 2002.
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All images in this gallery are transmitted, polarized light photomicrographs of 30-micron-thick rock slices (geological "thin sections"), with width of view ranging from 1 to 5 mm. Images were taken with a digital camera mounted on the trinocular head of a polarizing optical microscope.

Rock cut, sliced and thinned down to a regular thin section (30-micron thickness)
Technique: Photomicrograph under polarized light, crossed polars plus red tint plate

Uploaded

August 3rd, 2020