Enjoy the repost!

This summer I get to do my very first independent research project. I’ll be helping one of my geology professors finish classifying a meteorite with the use of an electron microprobe. This is my first time doing such a project and as such I have a lot to learn. But that’s the exciting part of doing science: the continual learning process. So, as such I figured it was time for me to learn about meteorites. Or meteors. Or meteoroids. Each name means something different. And according to my instructor, the classification has been changing lately. So, in my efforts to learn the basics about these ancient pieces of space debris, I will be posting what I’ve learned in my blog. To start, those confusing names.

It turns out the terms meteor, meteorite and meteoroide are not interchangeable. They seem to refer to the phases of change space debris goes through as it enters the earth’s atmosphere. This rock can come from the moon, comets, asteroids or even other rocky planets (most notably Alan Hills 84001 from Mars- that deserves a post of it’s own). Some of it can be left over material from the formation of the solar system, almost 4.5 billions years old. While their origins differ they pretty much go through the same process upon encountering the earth’s atmosphere.

The difference between the three names used to be simple. The flash of light produced by the entering debris was a meteor. Any chunks of rock that broke off were the meteoroids. And any piece that didn’t disintegrate in the earth’s atmosphere and made it’s way to the surface was a meteorite.

However, a paper recently published in Meteoritics & Planetary Science by Alan E. Rubin and Jeffrey N. Grossman proposed a complete overhaul of the definitions. They suggest that a meteoroid becomes a “10 micrometer to 1 meter sized natural object traveling through interplanetary space”. A meteorite is a natural object that is larger than 10 micrometers whose parent was any rocky celestial body. The meteorite had to travel under it’s own natural means with enough velocity to escape the gravitational pull of its parent body. It then has to hit something that is larger than itself, natural or artificial, and survive the impact. What is most interesting is that the meteorite doesn’t have to hit a foreign object. If it hits the surface of it’s parent body, it’s still considered a meteorite*.

So, those are the differences between the terms. I think in the next post about meteorites, I’ll cover the classification system. And as a side note, this is my first time writing about anything of this nature. In the very unlikely chance that someone from academia (or anyone at all) reads this, please be kind with criticism. I’ll happily accept feedback if done in a professional manner.

NASA-funded researchers found evidence this past summer that some building blocks of DNA, the molecule that carries the genetic instructions for life, found in meteorites were likely created in space. The research gives support to the theory that a “kit” of ready-made parts created in space and delivered to Earth by meteorite and comet impacts assisted the origin of life.

Below are some radar images, from NASA’s Goldstone Radar, of asteroid 1999 RQ36. This asteroid is about 0.5 km wide (1/3 of a mile), and has a 1/1000 chance of colliding with the Earth in 2182.

Doppler data on asteroid 1999 RQ36 from Goldstone. Credit: NASA

But each year a group of scientists have to plan and pack for a completely differerent kind of trip over the festive period. They are guaranteed a white Christmas, but only by going to the coldest place on Earth…

Searching for meteorites on skidoos (Image courtesy of NASA)

The long running Antarctic Search for Meteorites program organises expeditions during the southern hemisphere’s summer each year to search for meorites in the Antarctic. The team typically spend around 6 weeks living and working on the ice sheet, camping in temperatures which would have most of us running for the nearest  tropical island. They spend their time searching for meteorites on the ice.

This year’s expedition is just getting started. Team members will be heading to McMurdo Station (the US Antarctic research station on Ross Island) within the next few days. There they will undergo some safety training and stock up on supplies for the duration of the expedition, before heading out to the Miller Range Icefield where they will conduct a full systematic search for meteorites.

Found one! (Image courtsey of NASA)

You can follow the team’s progress on their blog, which will be updated on a regular basis. The only question is how many meteorites can they find this year? Can they beat last year’s haul of over 1200?

A Martian meteorite on the ice (Image courtsey of NASA)

Shock classification simply refers to looking at certain physical characteristics in minerals in order to learn more about the impact and collision history of that meteorite. In the same manner that we classify a meteorite according to weathering and metamorphism, shock is done on a scale of 1-6, but we attach an S to the front to indicate shock. At S1 an olivine crystal will have no planar fractures and experience undulation at less than 2 degrees (both of which will be explained further below). As you move up in the scale to an S5 you start to see an increase in planar fractures and degrees needed for undulation. At S6 a crystal has been recrystallized and you can no longer rely on fractures and undulation for classification.

These characteristics are hugely important in classifying a meteorite because it tells you more about the physical processes exerted on it during its time in space. And since I have a shock vein that pretty much runs the length of my thin section, it’s doubly important that I look at its influence on the rest of the meteorite.

To do this, I’ve been tasked with looking at about 100 olivine crystals. Mind you, this is on a thin section that’s approximately 1cm x 1cm. This means that if I’m not careful marking which crystals I’ve looked at, I could unknowingly classify an olivine crystal twice. Other minerals, such as pyroxene, are used in the classification process as well, but olivine is the big indicator. I’ve taken a few pictures to illustrate these points. I didn’t attach a scale bar, but all pictures were taken at 20x with a field of view of 596×447 micrometers. That should give you an idea of the size I’m working with.

1) Planar Fractures- These are breaks that occur in the body of the olivine crystal when subjected to stress from shock metamorphism. We count one set of fractures as being composed of three breaks in a parallel pattern. The more planar fractures we see, the greater the effects of shock metamorphism.

The blue olivine crystal in the middle displays a prominent set of planar fractures. A much smaller blue olivine crystal can be seen to the left of the main crystal, as well. It has a set of planar fractures, too.

2) Undulation- This refers to the way a shadow will sweep across a mineral as it’s rotated on the stage of a petrographic microscope. At certain angles a mineral will let all the light through. As you rotate the stage though, the minerals’ structure will gradually cancel out the light transmission until it goes completely dark, or experiences extinction. The greater the angle of undulation, the greater the shock metamorphism (usually).

The blue-green olivine in the center is at such as angle (129 degrees) as to allow full transmission of the light from the microscope.

When I put that same olivine at 151 degrees on the rotating stage, it starts to experience undulation.

The top of the mineral is slightly darker than the bottom half of the mineral.

At 154 degrees, the top half of the olivine crystal is now lighter than the bottom half (sort of)

It took just a 3 degree difference for the olivine to experience undulation. This probably falls into a the S3 category, but needs more work for full classification.

Looking at undulation in olivines is hands down the most challenging aspect of this work. Sometimes it’s easy to see the way the shadow sweeps across one end of the mineral to the other. Sometimes it’s not so apparent. Other times you’ll see groups of olivine crystals that experience undulation at angles different from the others.

3) Polysynthetically twinned clinoenstatite- Yup. Say that three times fast! This is just a very technical way of describing a type of pyroxene crystal that has a zebra stripe like pattern to it. The stripes alternate between light and dark as they’re rotated on the stage. This mineral is a good indicator of at least an S3 meteorite.

There are two clinoenstatites in this picture. One in the center and another in the bottom right corner. Both display twinning, or stripes.

What’s interesting about this classification system is that undulation and planar fractures aren’t linearly dependent. Or in other words, you don’t necessarily see an increase in planar fractures along with greater degrees of undulation. Sometimes you can get multiple sets of fractures (>3), but still see relatively short undulose extinction (3-4 degrees) and vice versa.

So, that’s a brief overview of where I’m at in my research. I know a lot of this is fairly technical if you haven’t had a petrology course, but I hope the pictures illustrate the concept I was trying to convey. As I continue with my research I’ll be sure to post other cool images and share what I’m learning. Feel free to post any questions and I’ll do my best to answer to them.

On the evening of July 28th in 1809, an object fell from the skies above the bustling New England seaport of Meath. The naturalist Jonathan Edward Kitts (known today for his famously intricate series of engravings, Maps of The Beaver Dams of the Penobscot River and its Tributaries) wrote of the event: “The great and fiery tail of the comet stretched across the entirety of the evening sky. Indeed, fisherman on the Grand Banks some 300 miles to the east witnessed its fall and reported hearing the fireball sear and whistle as it descended. The object came to earth in the vicinity of Frenchman’s Field with a terrible upheaval of earth and a belching of acrid smoke. After the impact, an eerie blue fire raged in the field for a quarter of an hour.”

Frenchman’s Field was an undeveloped plot of land on the hills above Meath’s waterfront, but it was close enough to the growing city that the fire brigade was sent up to contain the blaze. By the time they ascended to the field, the “blue flame” had subsided, leaving behind three acres of charred ground with a smoldering crater at its epicenter. As the brigade approached the center of the devastation, a tall man, wearing a seared overcoat caked in soot emerged from the crater.  He held aloft an oblong stone roughly three feet wide. “Behold!” The figure exclaimed. “Behold what God has granted to us poor sinners! Behold the Law! Behold your Moses, newly-born for this new country! Repent before the commandments of the Celestial Entity. Hear the Law! He has spoken to me! He has spoken his will!”

The man turned out to be William Altham, a respected merchant with ties to several wealthy Boston clans. Altham claimed that upon grasping the stone, he was visited by the emissaries of god, whom he called “The Celestial Entity.”  Altham proceeded to devote his fortune to the founding of a new religion focused on his experience in Frenchman’s Field. He built the Old Stone Church on the site of the crater, and showcased the oblong “sky stone” on its altar. From the church’s pulpit, Altham preached a confusing blend of Puritan revivalism and otherworldly mysticism that was particularly off-putting to the conservative population of Meath.

It should be noted, however, that there is a community of modern day readers (especially prevalent on the internet) who find uncanny scientific corollaries with some of Altham’s sermons. To these “Althamites,” his “Meditations on Christ’s Unknowable Light”  published in 1813, seems to predict wave-particle duality—a tenet of modern-day quantum mechanics. And “The Sermon of the Silent Clock,” with its repeated references to “a single moment in which all the creations of God once subsided, an Eden both empty and full,” is viewed as a reference to the initial space-time singularity of the Big Bang.

While Altham’s Church had a few devout followers (most notably the father of the famed abolitionist Henry Cranwich), he was largely ignored in Meath as a harmless crackpot. His business relationships faltered, and he was forced to close the church doors in 1816. Insolvent and under severe pressure from his debtors, Altham borrowed a friend’s boat in August of 1817 and rowed out into the bay, carrying the Sky Stone with him. He left a brief letter stating that he believed he had failed in his mission and must face the judgment of the Celestial Entity. “Like the martyred carpenter before me, I must wander into the wilderness. Do not search for me. If I resist temptation, I shall return!”

Neither Altham nor his Sky Stone was ever seen again. His dinghy washed ashore unoccupied the following day.

Click on the image to enlarge it.

On Sunday, I returned to the Sacramento Mineral Society’s 75th Annual Gem Show.  After not seeing people on Saturday (I had several other things going on — I will probably write about one of them in the next few days), I returned on Sunday to see people in high spirits — vendors, customers and club members.  The floor was not packed, but people came to spend some money.  This seems to be a turn-around from the last couple of years.  Does this mean we have an uptick in the rock-hound consumer confidence index?   Did we have the vendors with the mix of things people wanted to buy?  Hard to say, but as I mingled shopped and photographed, the feedback was positive.  Vendors made money and people went home with nice new prizes.

At the silent auction, business was a bit slower than on Friday, but for those who came up, there were deals to be had: labradorite, agate, jasper, thundereggs, geodes, jade, fluorite, sheen obsidian, vesuvianite… slabs, rough, specimens… I even acquired what I’m pretty sure is a fulgurite.  Toward the end of the  afternoon, the already cheap prices dropped further.  Rock bottom prices (bad pun intended) were available and taken advantage of

The “take” on the auction was a bit over $1200, clearing the $1000 needed to award the scholarship to a Sac State geology student in his junior year.  The student was actually unable to be there, as he was on a field trip.  Many thanks to our many customers who made this scholarship possible (some spend in excess of $100, returning again and again as new treasures went out onto the table).

At 4PM, the fun was over (not really), and it was time for the real work to begin — clean-up.

Rarely have I seen such chaos move so smoothly.  As the vendors packed up, and it was clear that they had done this once or twice before, club members lent a hand, assembled the club’s property (many folding tables, power cords and display cases, as well as left-over rock and various other goodies) and generally performed a thorough cleaning.   It was not necessary to have ADD to be there, but it probably would have helped.  By 7PM, it was hard to believe there had been a show with about forty vendors, a score of club members, and hundreds of customers.  We were all intact, tired, but in good spirits.  Vendor vehicles were riding low, though higher when they’d arrived; customers’ and club members’ vehicles were lower than they’d arrived….

Hope to see you next year.

Today I attended and worked at the first day of the 75th Annual Gem Show for the Sacramento Mineral Society.   As in previous years, it is being held at the Scottish Rite Center at 6151 “H” St., Sacramento, CA (very near CSUS aka Sac State).

The show boasts dealers of slabs, specimens, beads and jewelery making supplies (findings).  The club also provides the ever-popular prize wheel for juniors, geode cutting, hourly and daily raffles, a grand prize raffle, educational materials and a silent auction.  The auction raises funds for an annual scholarship for a CSUS student majoring in Geology or Earth Science.  I worked this table, helping Joy who is always a gas (I will avoid the obvious pun).  And, of course, I also made a few purchases toward this worthy cause (some of which are shown in the gallery below):

(Joy helping a customer)

(Thunderegg slice with Montana-like agate)

(Blue lace agate)

(Colorful “Onyx” i.e. calcite, not actual onyx)

Sharing the stage on which auction takes place, is the skeleton of a Siberian cave bear (approximately 50,000-70,000 years old).  It is on display courtesy of Applegate Lapidary, and is the last time this skeleton will be shown to the public.

(I will also get a side-view when I return on Sunday).

As a lapidary, I tend to visit the slab/rough dealers.  A few of the dealers carried some slabs, but it is not their primary focus.  Garth Duncan, proprietor of Gems of an Idea, however, carries slabs galore.   With at least 20 linear feet of table space, largely occupied by tubs of slabs, one can purchase an astonishing array of jaspers, agates, jade, tiger eye, rhodonite, and some mystery rocks.  Among other purchases from Garth, I was unable to resist some very unusual old-stock a slice of possible Botswana agate, a heel cut of Dryhead agate,Stone Canyon jasper in deep orange colors and a piece of tiger eye embedded in some (Graveyard Point-like plume agate):

Further scrutinizing what dealers have to offer, I succumbed to the sweet siren song of some gemmy Utah dinosaur bone (“gembone”) from Tom’s Rocks:

Of course, any gem show is incomplete without visiting the jade dealers.  We are lucky enough to have Mike and Joan Burkleo of Friends of Jade come to our show most years.  Not only do they sell suiseki, slicks and cobbles, but also carved and crafted jade items.  Of these, my favorite (and completely out of my price range) are the jade knives, displayed illuminated to show their translucence:

Perhaps one day…

Since I was working, I was unable to get photos of all the dealers.  Some I could not get due to lighting issues or not wanting to interfere with customers.  In any case, I will try again on Sunday.  These fine folks include sellers of magnificent crystal specimens, a mind-boggling array of meteorites and other fine  materials.  To finish, here are some more assorted photos I did get:

Gil Gonzalez, benitoite dealer/club member:

Joy Shopping at Garth’s booth:

Carrie helping a lucky winner at the prize wheel:

Bobbie working the raffle booth:

Floor activity:

Green River Formation fossils atApplegate lapidary (owners of the cave bear):

Well, that is all for now.  I have other plans for tomorrow, but I will be returning on Sunday.

Peace,

Stephan

Looking at "pretty colours", aka thin sections of meteorites, down a microscope

On Saturday we were at Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) again, offering visitors a chance to Meet The Cosmochemists.

MOSI’s Meet The Scientist takes place once a month (usually on the first Saturday). Each month a different group of scientists and engineers runs demonstrations and interactive activities for all the family.

We provided a range of things do so that all ages could have fun and learn something about cosmochemistry. Younger visitors (or those who just wanted to sit down for a while!) were kept busy naming and colouring the planets, along with trying to solve space-themed word searches, dot-to-dots and mazes. Large samples of meteorites were available for visitors to examine so they could learn about the different materials we find in meteorites. These different components tell us how our solar system has evolved over the last 4.5 billion years ago to the present day.

We also had some samples that could be viewed through a microscope. People were fascinated by the pretty colours they saw and we had many incorrect, but interesting and imaginative guesses as to what they might be looking at, ranging from butterflies to stained glass windows. One girl appeared disappointed that they were not fossilised dinosaur poo! But she was soon excited again when she learnt what it really was she was looking at – very thin slices (thin sections) of meteorites! When these are viewed using crossed polarised light the different minerals produce lots of different colours. This is a very useful tool used by geologists to study the mineral composition of both meteorites and terrestrial rocks (plus they look pretty!).

A large group of local Beaver Scouts were also visiting MOSI on Saturday, and at times we were inundated with 7-8 year old boys all scrabbling to look down the microscope, which all added to the fun of the day!

Racing to finish the space-themed word search

Looking at meteorites

The Earth and Solar System team

Yesterday we spent the day at Amazing Astronomy and Spacetacular, both part of Manchester Science Festival, at Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI). We were joined by other scientists, including some from BBC 2′s Stargazing Live and Jodrell Bank Center for Astrophysics, as part of a day packed with hand-on activities for all.

We had a selection of meteorites and moon rocks on show, which proved to be a big hit with visitors.

Amazing Astronomy, during the daytime, had activities for the whole family. Children guessed the ages of the meteorites to be between 15 and 800 years old, with some even guessing that their parents were older than the meteorites! They are actually about 4.5 billion years old, a lot older than mummy and daddy! One young girl asked if she’d grow up to be as old as that – if she eats all her veggies, who knows what might happen!

Wow, a meteorite!

Daddy, look at this!

Spacetacular, in the evening, was for an older audience. Adults had the opportunity to visit the exhibits before seeing “quite possibly the first stand-up comedy/science/fancy dress/variety/quiz show entirely themed around outer space”. Really getting into the spirit of things, aliens and astronauts enjoyed a great evening out together. For unusual uses of silver foil and glitter have a look at the photos on Manchester Science Festival’s Facebook page

If you missed us yesterday, or enjoyed it so much you want to learn more, we’ll be back at MOSI next Saturday (5th November) for Meet the Scientists.

There are more photos on our Facebook page.

Making craters (and lots of mess!) with astronomers from Jodrell Bank

BBC 2's Stargazing Live

During the day you can find us at “Amazing Astronomy” in the Air and Space hall from 10:30 AM -3:30 PM. We’ll also be around in the evening  from 6 – 7:30 PM during the build up to “Out of this world:A spacetacular Manchester adventure“.

If you can’t make it we’ll be posting photos and writing about the event here on the blog very soon..!
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Today we saw BBC Science Presenter Greg Foot give a very interesting talk about going from a science degree to working in science communication in the media. Greg is one half of Science Junkie who will be at The Plaza outside Lowry Outlet Mall tomorrow, also part of Manchester Science Festival. Go along to find out about the science of free running and other extreme sports! After you’ve been to see us at MOSI of course!

Hardly a surprise, then… Yet it was, for Itokawa is an S-type asteroid – the most common – whose spectra do not match those of ordinary chondrite meteorites despite the logic that commonly found meteorites ought to come from the break-up of commonly seen asteroids. S-type asteroids have annoyed astronomers for decades because of their cryptic appearance, and now they are broadly relieved. Any object floating around the inner Solar System for billions of years inevitably undergoes a process for which terrestrial weathering is a metaphor; it is affected by the stream of charged particles that constitutes the solar wind, by bumping other bodies and attracting debris from such collisions. The Itokawa dust particles turn out to have extremely thin veneers of sulfide and metallic blobs on the scale of a few nanometres that are thought to result from condensation of matter vaporised either by tiny impacts or the solar wind. This veneer gives Itokawa and probably other S-type meteorites their irritatingly uniform reddish colour. It strikes me that there is a problem here: all asteroids, no matter what their mineralogy and chemistry, would be subject to the same kind of process and end up with a similar veneer. Itakawa may well be an ordinary chondrite, but what about all the other S-type asteroids?

See also: Kerr, R.A. 2011. Hayabusa gets to the bottom of deceptive asteroid cloaking. Science, v. 333, p. 1081.

Related articles

• Extraterrestrial dust reveals asteroid’s past and future (newscientist.com)

Some would say it’s raining meteorites. There are literally tons upon tons upon tons of space rock floating around in space and it’s only a matter of time before a chunk of it lands on your car, your home or your noodle. In fact, it’s been happening since the beginning of time and will continue to happen long after we humans move on to someplace else.

According to astronomer Alan Harris, a person has a one in 700,000 chance of being killed by a meteorite, or experiencing a fatal “asteroid impact,” as he puts it, in the course of his or her lifetime. Fairly small odds, no doubt, yet those odds are better than winning the lottery and folks win the lottery every day (just not you).  According to the book “Death from the Skies,” the Earth is pummeled by 20-40 tons of meteors each day — enough, according to the book, to fill a 6-story office building each year. On the other hand, humans don’t actually occupy that much of the Earth’s surface: three quarters of the Earth’s surface is water, while quite a bit of land is either lightly populated or not populated at all. You’d think most of the space rock would rarely have an impact on humans. For the most part you’d be right.

However, after having his home on the business end of falling meteorites six times in almost four years, Radivoje Lajic would disagree. In fact, he would argue that his house has become a target for meteorite-pitching aliens and he’d like to know what he’s done to annoy them (the aliens). Even a non-statistician knows that once you’ve been targeted by aliens hurtling meteorites in your direction, you have to remove yourself from the 1/700,000 statistically random ratio. Ain’t nothing random once you’re a target.

That’s not hail. Mr. Lajic displays one of the meteorites that has targeted his house. Image: CEN and Metro.co.uk.

Why is YourWeatherBlog, a blog devoted chiefly to blogging about the weather, writing about meteorites? Because Mr. Lajic states that the meteorites only strike his house when it’s raining. He says he can’t sleep during a rainy night for fear of the next meteorite strike. Whether a rain event would lessen or increase the odds of a strike for Mr. Lajic is still being discussed by the statisticians. As a meteorologist, I’m left to ponder WHY the rain would lead to a meteorite strike. In last week’s blog about “raining marijuana” I thought it was unlikely but possible that small bits of marijuana might act as condensation nuclei at the center of a raindrop. If so, then technically it could “rain” marijuana. However due to their size, the cosmic stones raining down upon the Lajic household cannot be considered condensation nuclei. There must be some other meteorological connection between the rain and the meteorites. Or maybe not (most likely). Let’s not forget that Mr. Lajic is already a target; the aliens already know where he lives. Perhaps the aliens are simply using the cover of the stormy skies to conceal their presence and the windup — two fingers on the top seam for a curve; fingernails of the first three fingers dug into the seams, thumb at the bottom, pinkie to the side for a knuckle; or index on the trailing seam and the other fingers on the laces for a nice, tight spiral.

Though rain is moving closer to Bosnia today, it’s uncertain if meteors are expected. Image: ImpactWeather Gmaps 2.0.

Finally, meteor vs. meteorite vs. meteoroid. What’s the difference? A meteor is the visible trace of a meteoroid in space while a meteorite is a former meteoroid that entered Earth’s atmosphere and survived the impact with the Earth’s surface.

Since I left Robert Smyth (in 2003) it has changed a lot (for the better I think!) and one of the changes has seen it becoming one of 30 Leading Space Education Schools across the country. The project has been running since 2008 and has been funded by the SAAT (Specialist Schools and Academies Trust) who in turn are funded by STFC (who fund my PhD project). As the school is in Leicestershire it has close links with the National Space Centre which has also contributed to the project.

Year 11 class hard at work in the Space Education Lab

The project is run by two very enthusiastic teachers, Judith Green and Steve Althorpe who are also lead-educators at the Space Academy at the National Space Centre. They have put together a great Space lab at Robert Smyth complete with meteorite samples and Hubble Space Telescope images covering the walls. Judith was looking after me for my day at Robert Smyth (she did a very good job) and tries to include examples of space science in teaching of all science subjects, as students often find learning science in a “space” context more exciting. After my visit she incorporated relevant examples from my talk into the syllabus which was quite a compliment.

I would definitely recommend giving a talk on your research project to a different group of people. Having to gear my research towards 14/15 year old students made me think differently about my work and question things from a different point of view (trying to find the holes in the arguments that a clever teenager could spot). It was also a really nice feeling to see a room full of people so excited and interested in what I was saying, rather than a room full of people who knew it all/seen it all/heard it all before! I took some samples of meteorites with me and the students had a great time taking photos of each other holding the meteorites and bragging about it to their other friends afterwards who weren’t in the class. I also got a nice thank-you card from them a few days after. The whole experience made me more excited about my research again! I will definitely take up more outreach opportunities in the future.

We are going to be involved with a few public events at the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) in Manchester in the coming weeks, where visitors will have a chance to see pieces of the moon collected by the Apollo astronauts along with various meteorites. And if you have any questions about the solar system there will be plenty of scientists, from PhD students to professors, on hand to answer your questions. With something for all ages, we hope lots of people will join us for these events.

Manchester Science Festival

Manchester Science Festival runs from the 22nd to the 30th October, half term week for most schools in the area. There are numerous events taking part at different locations in and around Manchester throughout the week.

Amazing Astronomy

Join us at the Amazing Astronomy event at MOSI on Friday 28th October (10:30am – 3:30pm) for a whole day of extraterrestrial fun for all the family. There will be planetarium shows, fun hands-on activities, space knitting, meteorites, moon rocks, and a whole lot more. It promises to be out of this world!

Out of this World: A Spacetacular Manchester Adventure

Later on Friday 28th October  why not embark on an epic journey into the depths of the universe at the Out of this World: A Spacetacular Manchester Adventure (from 6pm, event starts 7:30pm). Learn more about the cutting edge science of space with local scientists and museum presenters, through space comedy, space cocktails (Yum!) and space craft.

The Spacetacular (presented by BBC Radio 4′s Helen Keen and local space scientists)  is billed as being “quite possibly the first stand-up comedy/science/fancy dress/variety/quiz show entirely themed around outer space”!

Please note that this event is for adults over the age of 18 only, and that advance booking is recommended.

Meet the… Cosmochemists

As part of MOSI’s regular Meet the… program, there’s an opportunity to Meet the Cosmochemists on Saturday 5th November (10:30am – 3:30pm). Another full day packed with meteorites, moon rocks and fun hands-on activities for all the family. You’ll also have  a chance to meet and talk to the scientist who spend their days studying these amazing samples to try to unravel the secrets of our solar system.

Something big landed here in the Arizona Desert. Turns out it was a huge meteor. Aparently Daniel Barringer was the first guy to come up with the theory that this big hole in the ground was made by a meteorite. The crater is estimated to be about 50,000 years old.

Start clicking the zoom in button on the map and Meteor Crater will reveal itself.  I found this place quite by accident on my way from Sedona to Taos. I was driving along I-40 when we spotted a huge sign making claims of the biggest hole on earth. We passed a few more signs and then saw it looming in the distance. Meteor Crater is just a short drive from the I-40 and there’s a gas station there if you’re worried about running out of gas on your way through the desert.

The visitor center is pretty nice and is equipped with all kinds of space memorabilia and meteorite displays. When you get out on to the catwalks and see how big it is, it’s kind of staggering. I couldn’t imagine the blast it took to make this place.

En route back to the I-40 we came across a small herd of cows and stopped to take pictures.

Well, we had to stop anyway because the cows didn’t seem to care too much about looking both ways before crossing the road.

They kept their distance when I tried to get a closer shot of them, but this one stayed still long enough for me to get the three shots for this HDR.

I thought I saw something interesting down this dusty road, sure enough I found a shooters dream land.  Gun owners also must appreciate the carnage.  I always tend to find myself imagining what must have happened to get these cars to the state they’re in now.  It can some time be a bit eerie coming across an old rusted out car from the 40s, all shot to hell like the Godfather.

This Old Jail seemed pretty ominous, especially with all the barbed wire and “No Trespassing!” signs everywhere.  No one was out there and no body seemed to mind us driving down the road to get there.  This thing reminded me of a castle from England – but it was out in the middle of the desert like some kind of outpost.  Around the back of the jail I found someones dedication to everlasting love painted on the wall.

Good Karma, Photographers, Travelers, Writers

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