Meteorites: From asteroid to the lab

Title: Meteorites: From asteroid to the lab

Description: "The journey of a meteorite from it's originating asteroid, where it is ejected by an impact, falling to the Earth and finally a microscope image of one of the meteorites I am studying for my PhD."

Maker: Aidan Ross, PhD student

Techniques used: Sewing machine, beading, machine embroidery, fabric paint

Inspiration: 

"I wanted to put my PhD into a picture. I'm a planetary scientist studying meteorites that all originate from one asteroid. The group of meteorites are called ureilites and they are very pretty in thin section under a microscope so I wanted to include that aspect somewhere in my submission. I wanted to go beyond just a single image though and include a story. My PhD uses microscope work along with a lot of different laboratory techniques (particularly electron microscopy) to study the chemical compositions of this group of meteorites with the final aim being to discern the genesis of the original parent asteroid. The meteorite in the microscope image is called LAR 04315 and was found in Antarctica. I took this particular image when I was visiting the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, before bringing the sample back to the UK to work on it at the Natural History Museum, London, and UCL. It is considered to be have anomalous features but the other samples I have looked at make me think that actually it is not as strange a sample as originally thought. This has implications for the processes that happened on the original asteroid."