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Met Name

Met Type

Thin Sections

13.1 grams.   Martian (nakhlite)

TKW 12 grams. Fall not observed. Found 2016, Morocco.

From the MetBul:

The exterior is partially covered by black fusion crust. Freshly broken surfaces reveal a mixture of mm-sized dark-green pyroxene grains and interstitial cream-colored feldspar.

Note from the MPOD Webmaster on 3-D Viewing:

I cannot fuse the stereo-pair images as presented. They are too large for my aged eyeballs to bring together. If you have the same problem, try this:

1) Click on the picture to view the full-resolution photo.

2) Click the 'Smaller' button 10-15 times to shrink the picture to the point where you can fuse the images.

3) Hold the mouse over the 'Bigger' button, fuse the pictures, and click the mouse while keeping the images fused to see how large you can go.

More Info on 3-D Viewing

 

Steve writes:

Nakhlites are the second rarest of the three Martian SNCs, and it was great to see Herbert’s piece of the meteorite they were named after in yesterday’s MPOD. To keep with the Nakhlite theme, here is another more recent one.

NWA 10645 was originally purchased by Dustin Dickens as a single 12 gram stone, but since then, additional material has been found, including this 13.1 gram piece. It exhibits glossy fusion crust with contraction cracks (Photos 1 and 2). The back of the piece is relatively clean and its lithology is fairly consistent (Photo 3), but its smallest broken side exhibits obvious evidence of sitting in the desert sand for a long time (Photo 4, which also shows its thin layer of fusion crust at the bottom). Its largest broken side is also fairly clean and exhibits two small, homogenous inclusions (they’re hard to see, but one is evident in Photo 5 just above the exact center of the image). Photos 6 and 7 show the largest in 3D (Photo 6 is a crossed-eyes version, while Photo 7 is its relaxed eye counterpart – use whichever one allows you to see the fusion crust receding into the top of the image).

NWA 10645 is paired with NWA 10153, NWA 10659, and NWA 10720. While I don’t have a thin section of NWA 10645, I do have a thin section of its pair NWA 10153 (Photo 8). A zoomable gigapixel version of it can be found on Gigapan. That thin section also has two of the aforementioned olivine megacryst inclusions (Photos 9 and 10).

For those new to Gigapan, click on the diagonal arrows to the right of the image to go into full screen mode, then hold down your mouse’s left key to move around and use its wheel to zoom in and out.