Meteorite hunting, not only for earthlings.

in #mars8 years ago

Finding bits and pieces that fall from space can be a lucrative pastime, if you get lucky...

If you find the right one and get it sliced and polished up it could go for over $10 000 a large polished slice....


Image source

Well it appears that not only earthlings look for meteorites.

Mars rovers do too...

The dark, smooth-surfaced object at the center of this Oct. 30, 2016, image from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover was examined with laser pulses and confirmed to be an iron-nickel meteorite.

The grid of shiny points visible on the object resulted from that laser zapping by Curiosity's Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument.

The meteorite is about the size of a golf ball. It is informally named "Egg Rock," for a site in Maine. Locations around Bar Harbor, Maine, are the naming theme for an area on Mars' Mount Sharp that Curiosity reached in October.

Iron-nickel meteorites are a common class of space rocks found on Earth, and previous examples have been found on Mars, but Egg Rock is the first on Mars to be examined with a laser-firing spectrometer.

Source

Now if the meteorite were found here on earth, it would likely be polished and etched, to reveal its internal structure, like the one pictured below.


Image Source

But since we cant have the one the rover found we will have to settle for a martian meteorite.


Image Source

These are bits of the Mars surface that were ejected into space by the impacts of large meteorites on mars.

These then float around in space where they may be captured by earth's gravity and end up here on earth, if the survive the trip through our atmosphere.

The black outer layer is scorching and melting received while traveling through earths atmosphere, generally creating a large fireball in the sky.

The chipped of edge is likely from final impact with or earth's surface.

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Downvoted to reduce large self-voting SG reward that is being deceptively hidden by voting after first payout, especially when the ability to view 30 day trending posts was removed from the UI.

I consider this to be intentional abuse that is unfortunately being enabled by accounts owned by members of the development team in order to allow a favored few to scam rewards. It is sad to see that Steemit has come to this.

I never thought @gavvet will get involved with something like this.

What is that too image composed of? Quartz and pyrite?

I assume top...

It's olivine (same as the crystals found in kimberlite) and nickle/iron... , so its from really deep inside a planet or other large body... probably the product of its entire destruction if it was a large differentiated asteroid.

Thanks for the info @gavvet!

Would be a nice find :)

Awesome posting, maybe my children will be able to visit mars one day and I can watch them from earth!

Those are beautiful!

Agreed and not just to look at but also in the story they tell...

I like to read this kind of stuff. Good one, nice work!

There will be more...

I know and I can't wait to see what you will write next!

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