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Micro Visions by John Kashuba

Meteorite Calendar by Anne Black

Meteorite of the Month by Editor

Tektite of the Month by Editor

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Meteorite Times MagazineLissa: Fell 110 years before Czechoslovakia, and 182 years beforethe Czech Republicby Martin Horejsi

Lissa is an L6 meteorite that fell in 1808. And that’s a long time ago by any meteorite collectingmeasurement. I feel fortunate to have a slice in my collection because Lissa fell when the ancestors onmy father’s side lived in what was once Bohemia, then Czechoslovakia, and now the Czech Republic.

This crust is so fresh, it doesn’t look a day over two hundred years old.

In general, L6 chondrites are not the most colorful of meteorite matrices, but there are exceptions andLissa is one of them. But then again, I wonder if the L6 classification might have been a little hasty. Thereare many visible roundish chondrules with distinct edges. The L seems within reason, but the six…. Fivemaybe? Four anyone?

As historic meteorites become smaller and ever harder to get, specimens such as Lissa become evenmore valuable. And not just as meteorites, but as something both physical and conceptual that ties us tothe people who centuries before wondered many of the same things we do today about these magicalstones from space.

Until next time….

The Accretion Desk welcomes all commentsand feedback. accretiondesk@gmail.com

Meteorite Times MagazineMystery Stone Revealedby Jim Tobin

I left you all hanging a couple issues ago regarding a meteorite I bought at the Tucson Gem and MineralShow. Well, I am ready to tell all now that it is done being classified.

It was a strange stone, with a very weird looking outside surface. It was a funny color and not verymagnetically attractive. Well, it was not very visually attractive either and though the price was sort ofnormal for today. It was not real bargain wise attractive either.

The whole stone is shown here with a gap a little wider then the actual space of the slice sentfor classification.

Yet for some reason I thought it could be something interesting if it was truly a meteorite. It was as youcan see sort of bubbly on the outside and it had circles that looked just like bubbles with the tops brokenaway. Here are a couple pictures of the circle and cup formations.

That question of whether or not it was a meteorite remained in my mind as it turned out for two days. I hadintended to get a diamond file and grind a spot immediately to see what was inside. It would be a whilebefore Paul and I made it finally to a place where I bought a $2 diamond file. That evening at the hotelroom I checked the rock out. I started out a little worried as I ground into it. It was a flat dark gray colorinside. I was thinking magnetite for a few seconds then I saw a tiny but unmistakable grain of metal andgave out a sigh of relief. It was undoubtedly a meteorite but it was weird.

I placed the 1,500 gram rock in my bag and could not wait to put it in the saw. That happened the followingmorning after getting home. As I said two months ago I cut off the end piece shown below and almostjumped out of my shoes. It was the most wonderful impact melt I had seen in a long while. Reminded mevisually of a Cat Mountain picture I had seen.

I lapped and polished the face of the end piece and hurried into the house. I needed to send thissomewhere to get classified. That is not so easy a thing to do in the world today. All the researchers arevery busy and backlogged. I took two digital pictures and attached them to an email. I sent it off to my firstchoice of lab. I was presumptuous enough to say in that email that it was an “impact melt unless I ammistaken”. I guess if I had not been so excited I would have been a little more reserved and let the experttell me. Especially since I was asking for his help.

Dr. Rubin at UCLA has done characterization work on several meteorites for Paul and I over the last 10years. And I was sure hoping he would be interested in doing this one. I was delighted when I got ananswer from him that it was an “impact melted ordinary chondrite”. He wanted to get a normal typespecimen size piece and a small piece of each of the two lithologies for making thin sections. So I was offto the saw again and I cut a thick slice off the end piece I had already prepared.

I had by pure accident picked a spot on the meteorite that had cracks. So wouldn’t you know, while I waslapping down the thick slice I was giving to UCLA it broke in half. Well, both pieces had both lithologies andboth were over the size required for a type specimen so I sent both. Whichever piece was best for thinsections Dr. Rubin could choose.

I ran right out to FedEx and sent the pieces off. They weighed a total of 62.57 grams. I was still prettyexcited about what a wonderful meteorite the mystery rock had turned out to be. I was seeing Paul thefollowing day and took the stone and end piece for him to see. He had been through all the buying andgrinding in the hotel room part it seemed only right to subject him to all my after cutting enthusiasm.

The following are the results that Dr. Rubin got characterizing the stone. Work for which I remain verygrateful to him.

L6 impact melt breccia S6 W2

Fa 24.1 ±0.2 (n=10) Fs 20.4 Wo 1.6 (n=3) Ca-pyx: Fs 8.3 Wo 44.4 (n=2)

There are 5-mm-size shocked chondritic clasts embedded in a melt consisting of 2-25-µm-size subhedralsilicate phenocrysts and 5-10-µm-size metal-troilite blebs. Also present are elongated troilite veins up top600 µm in length.

In the following pictures I will try to show some of the features mentioned in the above details.

Here is a shot of the two lithologies of the stone. Chondritic is on the left with a fewchondrules showing. The melt material is on the right with lots of round blebs of troiliteand metal visible though not illuminated in this picture. The nasty fracture whichcaused the type sample to break can be seen prominently running up and down.

This shot is of the unpolished face on the main mass. A band of melt is running left toright with chondritic material above and below. It gives a good idea of the tiny size ofthe 5-10-µm metal-troilite blebs in the melt as compared with the more or less normal

size metal grains in the chondritic portions.

In this difficult shot to take, the true small size of some of the blebs of metal in themelt can be seen. The faint lines seen running left to right are 180 grit diamond lapgrooves in the unpolished surface. Many of the metal blebs are far smaller then thegrooves.

The stone does have larger metal blebs and troilite inclusions in the melt. This is anarea that can also be seen in the photo above of the entire polished endpiece face.

Here is an area right at the boundary of the two lithologies where the metal grains andtroilite inclusions are essentially normal in appearance for an L chondrite. Once againthe tiny metal blebs can be seen in the melt at the bottom of the shot.

I could not help myself and made a thin section of the meteorite. It meant putting the endpiece back in thesaw and cutting a slice or two. I had no prior experience with thin section preparation of an impact melt,but it went about like any other thin section. I suppose over the last 15 years I have made almost ahundred thin sections in the garage. I really wanted to be able to give you some pictures of how themeteorite looks on a microscopic level. It took a couple hours for me to make the thin section. It took acouple more to get some nice photos. As one would expect with a type 6 chondrite it will stillhave chondrules and they will be in poor condition. That was certainly seen here. Aggregations of mineral

grains much of it olivine are scattered in areas that still appear as chondrules to the unaided eye. Therewere a few chondules that were in a little better shape with the grains of mineral still close together. But.all the chondrules are faded into the ground mass and rimless. Few of the individual crystal grains haddistinct sharp edges. There was one very strange structure. I think that it is likely a ruptured chondrule aswell. I will start with that picture.

When viewing thin sections in cross polarized light it is important to always rotate the slide so that you notonly see everything, but so that you can observe what is happening to the elements you are looking at.Some items may not show at all at a particular orientation of the slide. When rotated some will appear andothers will disappear. This disappearance is called extinction. At a certain point in the rotation of thecrystal grain it may have its transmitted light cut off by the filters. In fact the angles at which extinctionoccurs is a measurement taken by optical petrologist when examining rocks and their minerals. So hereis another picture of the choundrule shown above but with a large portion not extinguished. I like the extrainformation seen in the larger first picture. Not only did individual grains appear but interferencecolors emerged in much of the portion that did not extinguish.

The following picture is of one of the wide aggregations of mostly olivine crystals. The center of the shotshows grains probably all from the same slightly dispersed chondrule.

Here are a few more chondrules that I shot to give a further idea of how different they are from thebeautiful sharply defined chondrules of a type three chondrite. For those of you who love crisp sharpchondrules. You will find little in the following pictures to make you happy.

This was once a pretty barred chondrule I think, but not anymore.

This has to be the least exciting chondrule I have ever seen.Normally, I would not even bother to photograph it. When themeteorite has so much recrystallizing showing this is what youget.

The next group of pictures show the range of interference colors that olivine often has in cross polarizedlight. In most cases it is of small masses of crystal grains or portions of disrupted chondrules.

Here is a detail from the picture two above showing how damaged the crystals are in highly shockedmeteorites. Though a portion of this meteorite was completely melted and has nothing showing in the thinsection but a few widely scattered tiny crystal fragments, the chondrite portion has been pounded badlyalso. It is too bad that I am not set up to rotate the slide. I would love to check for undulatory extinction insome of these larger olivine masses. Maybe I will have to make a rotating stage for my microscope.

The meteorite has been submitted to the Nomenclature Committee and I expect that sometime in thefuture it will get an NWA number and be included in the official list of meteorites. This is especially excitingfor me since this meteorite is unusual and of more interest to science then some others I have hadcharacterized. It does make me wonder about what is hiding inside the other unclassified stones in mycollection. Ones I have not cut. This one was just so darn strange and odd looking I had to see inside.

collection. Ones I have not cut. This one was just so darn strange and odd looking I had to see inside.

Until next month enjoy your meteorites, Jim

Meteorite-Times MagazineMeteorite Market Trendsby Michael Blood

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Meteorite Times MagazineIMCA Insights – April 2012by IMCA TEAM

IMCA Insights – April 2012Sikhote-Alin meteorite stolen from the Museum of the University of New-Mexicoby Anne Black, Dr. Carl Agee, Tim Heitz

The story begins with Dr. Carl Agee, Director of the Institute of Meteoritics, and Curator of theMeteorites Collection housed in the Museum, on the campus of the University of New Mexico inAlbuquerque:

Meteorite Museum of the University of New Mexico.Front: the main mass of Norton County and Navajo (with a largecrack), hanging from the ceiling, a cast. In the back, the empty

case of the Sikhote-Alin. (Photo by Dr. Carl Agee)

One of our nicer display specimens in the Meteorite Museum at the University of New Mexico is the9490 gram Sikhote-Alin. It was stolen from its display case, during public opening hours, sometimebefore Christmas break 2011 -- the exact day of the theft is still unknown to me. But I did discoverthat the meteorite was missing on New Year’s Day 2012, when I was giving Michael Farmer a privatetour of the Meteorite Museum. The University was closed and the building had been locked up sincebefore Christmas, but I came to campus that day, to meet Michael who had come from Arizona toshow me some specimens of the new Martian fall, Tissint. After picking out some choice pieces ofTissint for the museum collection, I then offered Michael a tour of the museum on his way out. As Iwas showing him the museum displays, moving from case-to-case, I came upon a display where theSikhote-Alin should have been – but it was empty, not even the label was there, the specimen standwas tipped over. In disbelief, I tried to imagine that perhaps one of our staff had removed it forresearch or perhaps to clean the display case. After checking with everyone, I sadly came to theconclusion that our valuable meteorite had been stolen. To make a long story short, we contacted theUNM police, they took fingerprints, and eventually we all went home.That evening I contacted Anne Black, Vice President of IMCA, and she immediately offered todistribute an archival photo of our Sikhote-Alin with a report of its theft on the Internet. Then I wentto bed.

Early in the evening of January 1, 2012, I received this email from Carl Agee:

"One of our museum display specimens was stolen out of its case -- most likely just beforeChristmas break, during opening hours. The case has a security alarm, but apparently the theft wasnot recorded as an alarm by UNM police. I discovered that the specimen was missing this morningwhen I was doing an inspection of the Meteorite Museum. The specimen is a "Sikhote-Alin" weighing9490 grams -- see attached photo. I would like to alert the meteorite collector community to be onthe look-out for this specimen, it is unique and easily identifiable as our property. What do you thinkwould be the best way to inform those who could help us recover our specimen if it is offered forsale?

Thanks,Carl Agee"

I promptly responded and told Carl that I would immediately tell everybody, and I sent the followingemail to MeteoriteCentral, the IMCA mailing list, Club Space Rock, the French Forum and otherspromptly copied it to other forums they knew (Thanks everybody!), and of course I emailed MeteoriteExchange:

"Hello everybody,

I am sorry but I do have bad news to start the New Year.I just received the email below from Carl Agee from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. A9490 grams Sikhote-Alin was stolen from their Museum right around Christmas time.Please look at the picture (attached).www.impactika.com/sa-9490.jpgAnd please do watch for it, it could re-appear during the Tucson Show.

Thank you very much for your help.Anne Black"

Paul Harris was quick and published a "wanted poster" with picture everywhere, Facebook, RSS Feeds,Twitter, and his many siteswww.meteorite.com/missing_stolen.htmlwww.meteorite.com/news/index.htmwww.meteorite-information.comwww.meteorite-times.com/whats-newwww.meteorite-exchange.com/listing/sikhote-alin-meteorite-stolen-from-unm

Photo by Dr. Agee, as posted by Paul Harris

Then very very late that same evening I received an email and another picture from Michael Johnsonwith the comment "Does this look similar?". Yes, it did look like the same Sikhote-Alin, but as Iimmediately told Michael I would send the picture to Carl Agee and let him make the identification, andearly the next morning he did:

"Hi Anne,

Incredible! This almost certainly is our specimen.What next? Who has it?

Thanks,Carl"

When I called him a little later he told me:

When I looked at my email inbox in the morning I saw several emails from Michael Farmer and MichaelJohnson, sent in the middle of the night, basically saying that they had information about thewhereabouts of our Sikhote-Alin. Michael Johnson recognized the photo that Michael Farmer hadposted on his Facebook page as the same Sikhote-Alin Tim Heitz had asked him about, concerning thevalue of the same sample, over the Christmas holidays. I then contacted the UNM police that morning,and they contacted Tim Heitz.

Then Carl added that the thief who had sold the Sikhote-Alin to Tim Heitz had bragged that he hadmore; consequently the Police Department was suspecting that the thief would try to come back andsteal another one, and they had asked that the whole matter be kept very quiet so the thief wouldnot accidentally hear that he had been found out.

The story now moves to St Louis and Tim Heitz:

On December 21th I received a phone call from a man saying he had a meteorite and wanted to sell it.I receive calls like this all the time. The next thing I usually do is ask that they send me a picture, thepicture he did send wasn’t too clear, but it did look like a meteorite. I told him to mail the meteorite tome and if it was a meteorite, I would then buy it from him. I had him mail it to me like I have haddozens of other people do in the past.

Photo sent to Tim Heitz by the person who stole the Sikhote-Alin

On Saturday December 24th I received I found the box on my porch step with a big hole on the sideof the box, it was a wonder it made it there. The hole in the box was so big you could put both handsinside the box with no problem, the meteorite was there, and it was a meteorite, so I went to WalMartand wired a money gram for $1,800 to him. The next day I took a picture of it and sent it to a man Ithought was an expert with this kind type of meteorite, I really was shocked to find out what hethought it was worth.Then, on Monday morning, January 2, my wife woke me up to tell me a detective from the New MexicoUniversity called and said that I may have a stolen meteorite in my possession. When I called thedetective back and when he told me what kind of meteorite it was, I told him that Yes I had it and Ithought it didn't seem quite right paying such a low price for it but the man who sold it to me had toldme that he knew it was worth a lot more but he needed the money for Christmas presents for his kidsand wife. He stated that it belonged to his father who was a rock collector who had died a couple ofmonths prior and it was part of his rock collection.Then I had gotten in touch with Carl Agee of the Institute of Meteoritics at University of New Mexicowhere the meteorite had been stolen from. He told me he was sending someone to St. Louis to pickthe meteorite up. So, on Thursday December 29 at 7:00 p.m. I met Lee Ann and her friend who hadjust arrived in St. Louis from the Institute of Meteoritics and I gave her the stolen meteorite. Wetalked for 2 hours about meteorites and as gift to compensate for my loss she gave me a 45 grampiece of Norton County. The Norton County meteorite is a rare type of meteorite, it is a witness falland there is a wonderful story about how the University of New Mexico's ownership of Norton Countycame about. It was great to have such a rare and great piece of history added to my collection.

Lee Ann Lloyd and Tim Heitz(Photo provided by Tim Heitz)

And the story concludes where it started, in Albuquerque, with a much happier Carl Agee:

Tim Heitz confirmed that he was in possession of the UNM Sikhote-Alin and would hold it safe for us.Over the next few days we discussed how the return of the specimen would be arranged and finally Idecided that we would not risk having it sent by mail and so our administrative assistant Lee AnnLloyd volunteered to fly to St. Louis to take possession of the Sikhote-Alin from Tim Heitz in personand bring it back to Institute of Meteoritics -- which she did on Friday, January 6. The outcome ofthis theft was incredibly good, and I am extremely grateful to everyone who helped in the recoveryeffort. My deepest thanks to everyone involved, especially to the quick, decisive action, on NewYear’s Day, by Anne Black, Michael Farmer and Michael Johnson. The epilogue is that a few weeks ago a local TV-news reporter showed up at the Institute ofMeteoritics telling us University of New Mexico police had finally tracked down and arrested the personwho stole our Sikhote-Alin. He was caught in the act of another campus burglary, and the policequickly realized that they already had an outstanding warrant for his arrest for the IOM meteoritetheft!

Dr. Carl Agee and his recovered Sikhote-Alin(Photo provided by Dr. Agee)

This article has been edited by Anne Black and Norbert Classen.

• IMCA Home Page • IMCA Code of Ethics • IMCA Member List• Join IMCA • IMCA Meteorite Info

Meteorite Times MagazineNWA 6007 L3.5by John Kashuba

NWA 6007 is terrestrially fresh but shocked. It has well defined chondrules as you would expect of anL3.5. Compression has caused an orientation of components within the stone. Dark inclusions arescattered throughout.

Slice of NWA 6007 L3.5 S4, W1, 28 mm wide. Note orientation of elements.

Fanned sets of olivine bars within a larger chondrule. NWA 6007 L3.5

A porphyritic olivine chondrule (center) and a radial pyroxene chondrule (right center). Bothhave been squashed and the latter is “bleached”. Water has affected the outer part by

dissolving the glass from between the thin pyroxene fibers. NWA 6007 L3.5

In the center is a cryptocrystalline chondrule. This bright exposure shows it is composed ofnumerous zones, each of which is a bundle of pyroxene fibers, rather like those in radialpyroxene chondrules but finer. NWA 6007 L3.5

A dark inclusion about 3 mm long. NWA 6007 L3.5

A distorted radial pyroxene chondrule. NWA 6007 L3.5

A fine grained aggregate of minerals among more coarse neighbors. NWA 6007 L3.5

A closer view of the fine grained aggregate. The dark oval is a bleb of metal. Field of view is1.3 mm wide. NWA 6007 L3.5

In the center, is that an alien handprint?

Skeletal olivine laths grew from right to left. Crystallization was fast and might have beeninitiated at the right by contact with a cold object. Chondrule is 0.7 mm long. NWA 6007 L3.5

Meteorite Times MagazineMeteorite Calendar – April 2012by Anne Black

Please click on the meteorite calendar to view a larger image.

Meteorite Times MagazineSpringwater Pallasiteby Editor

Our Meteorite of the Month is kindly provided by Tucson Meteorites who hostsThe Meteorite Picture of the Day.

Contributed byRobert Ward, Springwater 312 gram slice. Pallasite PMG-an

Submit Pictures to Meteorite Pictures of the Day

Meteorite Times MagazineCollapsed Lei Gong Mo Bubble Fragmentby Norm Lehrman

A collapsed Lei Gong Mo bubble fragment, Guangdong Province, China(from the author’s private collection)

This is a popped bubble where a flap of the skin folded in on itself while still sufficiently hot and plastic tofuse along the inner surface. Both surfaces have seen the same duration of terrestrial etching, but onlythe original exterior is pitted, suggesting that the skin pitting formed in the first minute or two of the tektite’sexistence and didn’t change much thereafter. The technical message regarding skin ornamentation is thesame as that told by the classic Nininger “stretch” specimens.

However, there is a bit of a paradox lurking here: how did a skin flap a few millimeters thick remainsufficiently fluid to fold and weld while the centimeter thick bubble wall broke in a brittle fashion? A couple

of possibilities occur to me. The bubble might have broken in two stages: first a blister erupted andpopped, with a flap folding in and welding to the interior of the bubble, followed sometime later, perhaps onimpact, by the shattering of the thicker shell. Another idea for consideration invokes the sill-putty-likecharacter of highly siliceous melts.

In volcanic eruptions involving rhyolitic magmas, we typically see that expanding bubbles actually shatterthe liquid. These fragments remain sufficiently hot and fluid to weld once they degas and come to rest.The product is a welded ash flow or ignimbrite. Think back to the silly putty of your childhood. Strike it witha hammer and it shatters, but the fragments then slump and flow back into viscous liquid puddles.

Might it be that this tektite reflects a bubble that was expanding faster than the glass shell could stretch? Athin flap had enough flexibility to fold and weld, while thicker parts were too stiff to respond at a similarrate. These thick parts cooled and “froze” before they could exhibit the character of viscous flow seen inthe thinner parts. This is counter-intuitive to what one would expect, but grab your silly putty and stretch ittil a fine ribbon snaps. The ribbon will elastically rebound and collapse while the thicker parts will(temporarily) hold their form.

Meteorite Times MagazineMeteorite-Times Sponsorsby Editor

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Once a few decades ago this opening

was a framed window in the wall

of H. H. Nininger's Home and

Museum building. From this

window he must have many times

pondered the mysteries of

Meteor Crater seen in the distance.

Photo by © 2010 James Tobin