Thin section between crossed polarizers. Eucrite-unbr
TKW 8 kg. Fall observed 9 July 2014, Guelmim-Es-Semara, Morocco.
The MetBul has this description:
Glassy black fusion crust with translucent patches revealing plagioclase grains beneath. Broken surface shows mm-size white plagioclase and honey brown pyroxene grains, also some scattered mm-size opaque grains. Friable.
Steve writes:
For me, thin section photography is almost as much about the art as it is the science. In that regard, Tirhert is one of my favorites – even ignoring the science of it, the features are just fun to look at!
Photo 1 is a 31x reduction of a 1.48 Gpixel (50382 x 29426 pixel) stitch created from 132 individual 18 Mpixel images (Photo 2 simply overlays a grid that helps when communicating feature locations). A full resolution zoomable version can be found here, at Gigapan
For those new to Gigapan, click on the diagonal arrows at the right of the image to go into full screen mode, then use your mouse to pan around and your scroll wheel to zoom in and out.
Photos 3 through 10 are cropped areas from the original full stitch, rescaled to MPOD’s 1600 pixel preferred width. They illustrate some interesting features, including a fine-grained inclusion, bisected crystals, bubble trains, and geometric-like areas with some exhibiting almost Escher-like patterns (as an example, the structure a bit above and to the right of center in Photo 9 looks to me like a descending staircase; not to be outdone, my wife says the center of Photo 10 appears to show a perturbed little alien looking back at the camera through a microscopic window).
The approximate areas imaged in each subsequent photo can be found in the following coordinates of Photo 2’s grid:
Photo 3: C-F by 8-10
Photo 4: O-P by 9-10
Photo 5: A-C by 11-13
Photo 6: Q-T by 6-7
Photo 7: E-G by 7-8
Photo 8: K-L by 11-12
Photo 9: K-L by 3-4
Photo 10: D-E by 6-7 |