[meteorite-list] Meteorite Picture of the Day
Today's Meteorite Picture of the Day: Fukang Contributed by: Paul Swartz http://www.tucsonmeteorites.com/mpodmain.asp?DD=06/26/2015 __ Visit our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/meteoritecentral and the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com https://pairlist3.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] Wanted: Iron and pallasite slices / encuts
Hello All, I'm looking for some slices of iron meteorites and pallasites: Iron meteorites: - up to about 100g per piece (prefered 10-30g) - eched / polished (not etched) or even raw slices acceptable, endcuts are also welcomed - no requirements regarding types, can be popular like Campo, Sikhote, Gebel and many many others - quantity: up to 30 pcs Pallasites: - 3-20 g each - Seymchan prefered, others also acceptable if stable speciments - polished / polished and etched slices required, small endcuts also acceptable - up to 10 pcs required If you are able to provide any of overmentioned in reasonable prices - please contact me off the list: tomekogl...@poczta.fm Regards tomasir __ Visit our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/meteoritecentral and the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com https://pairlist3.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] Wanted: Iron and pallasite slices / encuts
Hello All, I'm looking for some slices of iron meteorites and pallasites: Iron meteorites: - up to about 100g per piece (prefered 10-30g) - eched / polished (not etched) or even raw slices acceptable, endcuts are also welcomed - no requirements regarding types, can be popular like Campo, Sikhote, Gebel and many many others - quantity: up to 30 pcs Pallasites: - 3-20 g each - Seymchan prefered, others also acceptable if stable speciments - polished / polished and etched slices required, small endcuts also acceptable - up to 10 pcs required If you are able to provide any of overmentioned in reasonable prices - please contact me off the list: tomekogl...@poczta.fm Regards tomasir __ Visit our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/meteoritecentral and the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com https://pairlist3.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] Increasing Variety on Pluto's Close Approach Hemisphere, and a 'Dark Pole' on Charon
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150622-3 Increasing Variety on Pluto's Close Approach Hemisphere, and a Dark Pole on Charon June 22, 2015 [Images] Features on the Close Approach Hemisphere: These images, taken by New Horizons' Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), show numerous large-scale features on Pluto's surface. The distance to Pluto ranges from 47 million kilometers (about 29 million miles) on June 5 to 31 million kilometers (19 million miles) on June 18. When various large, dark and bright regions appear near limbs, they give Pluto a distinct, but false, non-spherical appearance. Pluto is known to be almost perfectly spherical from previous data. These images are displayed at four times the native LORRI image size, and have been processed using a method called deconvolution, which sharpens the original images to enhance features on Pluto. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute A Dark Mystery on Charon: These recent images show the discovery of significant surface details on Pluto's largest moon, Charon. They were taken by the New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on June 18, 2015. The image on the left is the original image, displayed at four times the native LORRI image size. After applying a technique that sharpens an image called deconvolution, details become visible on Charon, including a distinct dark pole. Deconvolution can occasionally introduce false details, so the finest details in these pictures will need to be confirmed by images taken from closer range in the next few weeks. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute NASA's New Horizons spacecraft doesn't pass Pluto until July 14 - but the mission team is making new discoveries as the piano-sized probe bears down on the Pluto system. In a long series of images obtained by New Horizons' telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) May 29-June 19, Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, appear to more than double in size. From this rapidly improving imagery, scientists on the New Horizons team have found that the close approach hemisphere on Pluto that New Horizons will fly over has the greatest variety of terrain types seen on the planet so far. They have also discovered that Charon has a dark pole - a mysterious dark region that forms a kind of anti-polar cap. This system is just amazing, said Alan Stern, New Horizons Principal Investigator, from the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado. The science team is just ecstatic with what we see on Pluto's close approach hemisphere: Every terrain type we see on the planet - including both the brightest and darkest surface areas - are represented there, it's a wonderland! And about Charon - wow - I don't think anyone expected Charon to reveal a mystery like dark terrains at its pole, he continued. Who ordered that? New Horizons scientists use a technique called deconvolution to sharpen the raw, unprocessed pictures that the spacecraft beams back to Earth; the contrast in these latest images has also been stretched to bring out additional details. Deconvolution can occasionally produce artifacts, so the team will be carefully reviewing newer images taken from closer range to determine whether some of the tantalizing details seen in these images persist. Pluto's non-spherical appearance in these images is not real; it results from a combination of the image-processing technique and Pluto's large variations in surface brightness. The unambiguous detection of bright and dark terrain units on both Pluto and Charon indicates a wide range of diverse landscapes across the pair, said science team co-investigator and imaging lead Jeff Moore, of NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View, California. For example, the bright fringe we see on Pluto may represent frost deposited from an evaporating polar cap, which is now in summer sun. New Horizons is approximately 2.9 billion miles (4.7 billion kilometers) from Earth and just 16 million miles (25 million kilometers) from Pluto. The spacecraft and payload are in good health and operating normally. [Movie] Features on Pluto and Charon: Over the course of this movie, assembled from a long series of images obtained by New Horizons' telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) May 29-June 19, Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, appear to more than double in size. From this rapidly improving imagery, scientists on the New Horizons team have found that the close approach hemisphere on Pluto that New Horizons will fly over has the greatest variety of terrain types seen on the planet so far. The movie is Plutocentric, meaning that Charon is shown as it moves in relation to Pluto, which is digitally centered in the movie. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics
[meteorite-list] Mars Odyssey THEMIS Images: June 22-26, 2015
MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES June 22-26, 2015 o Morava Valles - False Color (22 June 2015) http://themis.asu.edu/zoom-20150622a o Ostrov Crater - False Color (23 June 2015) http://themis.asu.edu/zoom-20150623a o Crater - False Color (24 June 2015) http://themis.asu.edu/zoom-20150624a o Crater - False Color (25 June 2015) http://themis.asu.edu/zoom-20150625a o Saheki Crater - False Color (26 June 2015) http://themis.asu.edu/zoom-20150626a All of the THEMIS images are archive here: http://themis.asu.edu/latest.html NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in co.oration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Dr. Philip Christensen at Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the Odyssey project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. __ Visit our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/meteoritecentral and the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com https://pairlist3.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] NASA Prepares for Future Space Exploration with International Undersea Crew
June 24, 2015 RELEASE 15-138 NASA Prepares for Future Space Exploration with International Undersea Crew NASA will send an international crew to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean this summer to prepare for future deep space missions during the 14-day NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) 20 expedition slated to begin July 20. NEEMO 20 will focus on evaluating tools and techniques being tested for future spacewalks on a variety of surfaces and gravity levels ranging from asteroids to the moons of Mars and the Martian surface. The NEEMO team is particularly excited about this mission as it is a huge milestone to have achieved 20 missions at Aquarius over the past 15 years, NEEMO Project Lead Bill Todd said. 'Living and working in the highly operational, isolated and extreme environment of the aquatic realm has provided significant science and engineering for the benefit of human spaceflight. It has also clearly proven to be as close to spaceflight as is possible here on Earth. The mission will test time delays in communications due to the distance of potential mission destinations. The crew also will assess hardware sponsored by the European Space Agency (ESA) that allows crew members to read the next step in a procedure without taking their hands or eyes away from the task using a tablet, a smartphone and a head-mounted interface. ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano will command the NEEMO 20 mission aboard the Aquarius laboratory. Parmitano flew in space during Expeditions 36 and 37 aboard the International Space Station in 2013, where he spent 166 days living and working in the extreme environment of microgravity. He conducted two spacewalks on his first spaceflight. Parmitano will be joined by NASA astronaut Serena Aunon, NASA EVA Management Office engineer David Coan and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Norishige Kanai. The NEEMO crew and two professional habitat technicians will live 62 feet (19 meters) below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean in Florida International University's Aquarius Reef Base undersea research habitat 6.2 miles (5.4 nautical miles) off the coast of Key Largo, Florida. For more information about NEEMO, the crews and links to follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/neemo -end- __ Visit our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/meteoritecentral and the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com https://pairlist3.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] OSIRIS-REx's First Instrument Arrives for Integration Into the Spacecraft
http://uanews.org/story/osiris-rex-s-first-instrument-arrives-for-integration-into-the-spacecraft OSIRIS-REx's First Instrument Arrives for Integration Into the Spacecraft University of Arizona June 26, 2015 The first of five instruments that will map and analyze asteroid Bennu as part of the UA-led OSIRIS-REx mission has arrive at the Lockheed Martin Space Systems facility and awaits integration into the spacecraft structure. A journey that will stretch millions of miles and take years to complete begins with a short trip to a loading dock. The first of five instruments for a spacecraft that will collect a sample from an asteroid and bring it back to Earth has arrived at the Lockheed Martin Space Systems facility in Littleton, Colorado, for its installation onto NASA's Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx, spacecraft. Led by the University of Arizona, OSIRIS-REx is the first U.S. mission to fly to, study and retrieve a pristine sample from an asteroid and return it to Earth for study. Scheduled to launch in September 2016, the spacecraft will reach its asteroid target in 2018 and return a sample to Earth in 2023. The mission will allow scientists to investigate the composition of material from the very earliest epochs of solar system history, providing information about the source of organic materials and water on Earth. The OSIRIS-REx Thermal Emission Spectrometer, or OTES, will conduct surveys to map mineral and chemical abundances and to take the asteroid Bennus temperature. OTES is the first such instrument built entirely on the Arizona State University campus. It is a significant milestone to have OSIRIS-REx's first instrument completed and delivered for integration onto the spacecraft, said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the UA's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. The OTES team has done an excellent job on the instrument and I deeply appreciate their scientific contribution to the mission. OTES plays an essential role in characterizing the asteroid in support of sample-site selection. OTES is one of five instruments from national and international partners. These instruments will be key to mapping and analyzing Bennu's surface and will be critical in identifying a site from which a sample can be safely retrieved and ultimately returned to Earth. OTES, the size of a microwave oven, has spent the last several years being designed, built, tested and calibrated, says Philip Christensen, OTES instrument scientist at ASU. Now OTES is shipping out for the solar system. The instrument will be powered on shortly after the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft begins its two-year trip to the asteroid Bennu. On arrival at Bennu, OTES will provide spectral data for global maps used to assess potential sample sites. It will take thermal infrared spectral data every two seconds and will be able to detect temperatures with an accuracy of 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit. It also will detect the presence of minerals on the asteroid's surface. The OSIRIS-REx Camera Suite (OCAMS) consists of three cameras that will image the asteroid Bennu during approach and proximity operations. Scientists and engineers at the UA's Lunar and Planetary Lab designed and built OCAMS to image Bennu over nine orders of magnitude in distance, from one million kilometers (more than 620,000 miles) down to two meters (6.5 feet). PolyCam, the largest camera of the OCAMS suite, is both a telescope - acquiring the asteroid from far away while it is still a point of light - and a microscope capable of scrutinizing the pebbles on Bennu's surface. MapCam will map the entire surface of Bennu from a distance of three miles, and the Sampling Camera, or SamCam, is designed to document the sample acquisition. The OCAMS instrument suite is scheduled to be installed on the spacecraft in September. The OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter, or OLA, will scan Bennu to map the entire asteroid surface, producing local and global topographic maps. OLA is a contributed instrument from the Canadian Space Agency. The OSIRIS-REx Visible and Infrared Spectrometer, or OVIRS, measures visible and infrared light from Bennu, which can be used to identify water and organic materials. The instrument is provided by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. A student experiment called the Regolith X-ray Imaging Spectrometer, or REXIS, will map elemental abundances on the asteroid. REXIS is a collaboration between the students and faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard College Observatory. The next few months will be very busy as we begin integrating the instruments and prepare for the system-level environmental testing program to begin, said Mike Donnelly, OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center provides overall mission management, systems
[meteorite-list] Exactly 37 Years after Its Discovery, Pluto's Moon Charon Is Being Revealed
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150622-2 Exactly 37 Years after Its Discovery, Pluto's Moon Charon Is Being Revealed June 22, 2015 [Image] Charon discovery image. [Image] Charon discoverers James Christy (seated) and Robert Harrington in 1978. In June 1978, U.S. Naval Observatory astronomer James Christy noticed something unusual. He was studying highly magnified photos of Pluto, and Pluto wasn't round. A small bump marred one side of blurry Pluto. That bump turned out to be Pluto's largest moon, Charon, whose discovery Christy (working with late colleague Robert Harrington), made on June 22, 1978. Like Pluto in 1930, Charon was found using photographic plates taken in Flagstaff, Arizona. Thirty-seven years later, Charon is about to be revealed by NASA's New Horizons mission. As New Horizons draws closer by nearly a million miles a day, every observation of it brings new knowledge about this mysterious moon - a world far larger than even the largest asteroid, Ceres. Even though Pluto and Charon are partners, they are known to be quite different in appearance and composition. As New Horizons reveals them in far greater detail than ever before possible, we hope to find out why that's so, says Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado. At 750 miles in diameter, Charon is half Pluto's size. However, it weighs only 12 percent as much as Pluto. This suggests that Charon may be half ice and half rock; Pluto, by contrast, if about 70% rock by mass. The pair form what planetary scientist call the only known binary planet in the solar system. Pluto and Charon are tidally locked, circling their common center of gravity once every 6.4 days. As a result, an astronaut on Pluto's surface would always see Charon in the same part of the sky, but appearing seven times larger than Earth's moon, spanning 3.5 degrees on the sky. Charon and Earth's moon are believed to share a similarity in that both are thought to have been born out of giant impacts early in the solar system's history. In the case of Pluto and Charon, it may have been more of a grazing impact that left both objects largely intact but may have also formed Pluto's retinue of at least four other small moons. Additional moons, or even dust rings, may await discovery by New Horizons. Ground-based observations have shown that while Pluto's surface is covered with frozen nitrogen and methane, Charon appears to be primarily covered in water ice. Charon could even be dotted by icy volcanoes bubbling a slushy mixture of water and ammonia, and it may have an atmosphere, perhaps siphoned off Pluto. Every day brings us closer to seeing Charon not as a fuzzy point of light, but as a fully mapped, and maybe even geologically active, world by this July, says New Horizons Project Scientist Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland. We aim to find out. __ Visit our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/meteoritecentral and the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com https://pairlist3.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] Mars Rover Opportunity Update: June 8-17, 2015
OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Rover In Good Health After Communication Blackout - sols 4053-4058, June 19, 2015-June 24, 2015: Opportunity is on the west rim of Endeavour Crater at the 'Spirit of St. Louis' crater near the entrance of 'Marathon Valley.' The Earth-Mars Solar Conjunction command moratorium and communication blackout has just ended. Telemetry is again being received from the Opportunity and the rover is in good health. Normal tactical planning has resumed with the Sol 4059 (June 25, 2015) plan. As of Sol 4055 (June 21, 2015), the solar array energy production was 477 watt-hours with an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 0.797 and a solar array dust factor of 0.644. Total odometry is 26.33 miles (42.37 kilometers), more than a marathon. __ Visit our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/meteoritecentral and the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com https://pairlist3.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] Mars Rover Opportunity Update: June 19-24, 2015
OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Rover In Good Health After Communication Blackout - sols 4053-4058, June 19, 2015-June 24, 2015: Opportunity is on the west rim of Endeavour Crater at the 'Spirit of St. Louis' crater near the entrance of 'Marathon Valley.' The Earth-Mars Solar Conjunction command moratorium and communication blackout has just ended. Telemetry is again being received from the Opportunity and the rover is in good health. Normal tactical planning has resumed with the Sol 4059 (June 25, 2015) plan. As of Sol 4055 (June 21, 2015), the solar array energy production was 477 watt-hours with an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 0.797 and a solar array dust factor of 0.644. Total odometry is 26.33 miles (42.37 kilometers), more than a marathon. __ Visit our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/meteoritecentral and the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com https://pairlist3.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] AD: My Ebay auctions ending on Weekend - Reduced prices
Dear Collectors! Ending soon on Weekend my EBay auctions of meteorites, Thin Sections, impactites, etc. Many new added quality meteorites in reduced price. See here: http://stores.ebay.com/eurodome Thin Sections: Chelyabinsk LL5 Thin Sections (2 pcs) from 1.99USD NWA 8409 Achondrite-ungr for 99 USD - Possible Mercury, paired with NWA 7325 AWSOME NWA 4434 LL4 S2 W2 chondrite for 80 USD - very nice barred-chondrule + chondrule fest Sikhote Alin IIAB iron meteorites Highly regmalypted, oriented, roll-over lipped, bullet like, flow-lined - what you want Lot of pieces from 50USD Taza iron meteorite - roll over lips, flight marked - 30 USD Pallasites: Seymcham - quality etched p. slice 110 USD Brahin - quality etched p. slice from 1.99 USD NWA unclassified chondrites: Regmalypted pieces, with desert varnished patina, flow lines, contraction cracks, nice shapes - from 1.99 USD Chelyabinsk ULTIMATE Collector SET: Individual AWSOME shape 33 gr Chelyabinsk meteorite + Thin Section + Glass Sample + Local News Paper from Russi + Soil Sample from Chelyaibinsk - only 299 USD !!! Allende CV3 full slice with black fuison-crust - awsome piece - 118 USD Historic Mócs L5-6 fallen meteorite from Transylvania, 1882 - 170 USD - very rare !!! Muonionalusta IVA quality etched cirlce plate with Awsome Widmanstatten pattern - 50 USD Tektites: Nice Libyan Desert Glasses - from 29 USD Moldavites from 24 USD Philippinites, Rizalites -nice shape - from 22 USD And many more: Oum Rokba (NWA 400), NWA 241 early chondrites, Agoudal iron meteorites, fligh marked Henbury IIIAB irin meteorites from Australia, Box Holders, etc. New official Hungary Chondrite: CSÁTALJA H4, S4-6, W1 with highly shocked mineral: Akimotoite Small and big slices. Very rare meteorite! from 79 USD - 1599 USD If you like them and want to buy them please bid or contact me. Best Regards! Zsolt Kereszty IMCA#6251 Meteoritical Society MTA reserach centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences Hungarian Astronomical Association Hungary __ Visit our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/meteoritecentral and the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com https://pairlist3.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
