Meteorite slice detail - chondrite NWA 5437

[Beatsy]

The surface of a roughly smoothed slice of the ordinary chondrite NWA 5437 that fell (unobserved) in North West Africa. An interesting little piece of rock with crystals, some metal and several different minerals. Chondrules clearly visible so I think the classification (type) is L/LL3-5.

First image taken with a 5x Mitutoyo while the rest are just 100% crops from the first.

Polishing would likely bring out more detail and I may even pick it apart to isolate some of the nicer (tiny) crystals. But that's a tinker for another day.



Crop A


Crop B


Crop C

[siliconGary]

That is really neat. Love the colors and texture. Is it roughly polished to give a flat surface, or did you find a flat area to image on a irregular surface?

[Beatsy]

Thanks. It came as a small sawn slice about 2mm thick. I just gave it a quick rub on some 240-grit emery to remove the worst of the saw marks. Didn't want to go too mad at first in case it snapped. I'll dig out some finer grits and make it smoother another time.

[g4lab]

Very nice

[MarkSturtevant]

How interesting! One can 'see' from this the eons of slow accretion of debris during the early evolution of our solar system. It looks like its quite a mixture of different materials, as judged from the different colors and textures.