[meteorite-list] Pallasite story #2

From: Michael Farmer <meteoriteguy_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2007 08:58:20 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <603772.8210.qm_at_web33108.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Sorry for the broken email, I hit the wrong button and
it sent before spell check and being finished. Here is
the rest of the story.


When I arrived at Robert's location, I could see him
walking around and small black pallasite pieces laying
all over the ground. There were 9 pieces on the
surface, and several more under the sand. We could see
the sandblasted metal and large olivine crystals
glinting in the bright desert sun. We had a little
celebration and set up camp at that spot. About four
hour later, Robert excitedly yelled into the radio
that he found more pieces a quarter mile away. I went
over there and sure enough, 5 more pieces, laying in a
line about 0.5 meter long embedded in the sandy
surface. We hunted for hours more but found nothing
else. That night we celebrated with an ice-cold bottle
of fine champagne that we had bought in Duty Free. We
forgot the glasses though, and I drank mine from a
coffee mug, Robert drank his from an empty noodle cup!
Even with the uncivilized utensils, that champagne was
the taste of victory and success. We talked all night
and found it difficult to sleep, wondering just how
many kilos of pallasite we would find the next day.
     We were having difficulty deciding how we would
divide up the small amount of material that Robert had
found that day (less than 1 kilogram), who would get
which piece etc, since I had found nothing. The next
day however, would turn out to be mine. We had to go
for fuel but returned late in the afternoon, where we
started searching even before returning to camp. I
decided to go check on the camp when to my amazement,
about 30 meters from my tent, I drove up on a patch of
pallasite pieces, 8 specimens on the surface totalling
about 500 grams. We had been sleeping so close to
those meteorites. Anyone who knows about hunting in
the desert knows that lighting is everything. You can
miss a large meteorite very close to you if you are
looking into the sun, but put the sun and your back
and it is hard to miss even a small meteorite in the
sand. Later that evening, I found two more pieces
visually, then after sunset, while gridding, I heard a
scream on the detector being pulled behind the truck.
I got out, saw nothing on the ground, and pulled out
my Goldmaster for a spot check. As I swung the coil, I
got a large signal so I called Robert over. We dug up
about a 100 gram pallasite from about 3 cm under the
soil. I swung again and heard nothing so I packed up
the detector and continued driving. Robert immediately
called me back and said that I had not found all of
the meteorite, in my excitment to hunt I broke the
cardinal rule, I did not fully check the hole. Robert
got multiple meteorite signals only inches from where
I had found the first one. We dug up more than 10
pieces from that little area. Later that night, around
10 pm, I got a large signal on the detector, only
about 1 meter from a place where Robert had been
pivoting the car on for hours during gridding.
Unfortunately for him, he kept turning on the same
point, rather than expanding out the turn. I cut
accross that spot and found one of the most beautuful
Pallasite pieces I have ever seen, weighong 216 grams,
shaped like a Klingon bird of Prey spaceship, with an
olivine measuring over 40 mm long! He had missed it
time and time again by less than three feet.
   That specimen turned out to be the last one we
would find. We gridded for almost two weeks after
that, periodicly hunting meteorites elsewhere only to
return to the pallasite strewnfield. We never found
another piece, even though there is hardly a speck of
sand that hadnt been driven over time and time again.
The meteorites seems to be a very small fall.

As you can find on the Meteoritical Bulletin, there
are just over 50 pallasites known (over 70 listed but
that includes many paired Antarctica pieces). So there
are the same amount of pallasites as there are Lunar
and Martian meteorites. That shows you how rare they
are, so finding that 180 gram first piece of this
pallasite was one of the luckiest days of my life, it
is a feeling that can't be described.

I will work on photos now, so expect to see an
expanded page soon.
Michael Farmer
Received on Sat 17 Mar 2007 11:58:20 AM PDT