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(meteorobs) Micrometeorites
In addition to the material I collected off the ground, at the drip line
behind my house, last night I collected about 3 gallons of rainwater.
I was informed that stony micrometeorites greatly outnumber metalic
ones. So I will try and strain the rainwater through a coffee filter and
see what I find.
On good athority I am also informed that "The concentration of
micrometeorites versus terrestrial grains is about 1 in several
million".
Not very good odds!
There must be some ways to improve the odds for a amateur micrometeorite
collector. If there are any better ways, I will try them and report the
results here.
Again, on good athority here is what I'm looking for.
"What you want to look for is a very porous black grain with a few shiny
gold grains or maybe a few colorless to green clear grains inside".
Here is my collection method.
I put a small magnet from a defunct speaker in a ziplock bag. With the
bag pulled up tight and flat against the magnet I dabbed the ground
where rain washes off my roof, and hits the ground.
After about 6 to 10 "dab's" I checked with a 10x glass and carefully
removed the magnet from the side of the baggie so the magnetic material
fell off onto a white sheet of paper.
Some of the collected material can be seen on these two webpages.
http://sunwatt.mystarbanddot net/micromM2.htm
http://sunwatt.mystarbanddot net/micromM.htm
Last night I hung a clean 5 gal plastic bucket from the top of a fence
post away from any drip line, or trees. I got about 3 gallons of clean
rainwater, and tomorrow will try and run that through a coffee filter.
Not sure how to remove solids caught by the filter, but I'm sure I can
find a way.
Stony micrometeorites are more numerous than metallic ones so thats why
I'm trying to filter some rainwater.
Maybe I'll get lucky on my first try. <G>
BTW, my equipment is a IntelPlay QX3 microscope at about 60X. Yes, its a
kids toy microscope. <G> I have a real microscope, but as of now I dont
have a way to attach a camera to it.
Here are some websites I've found on this subject. They seem to say that
its fairly "easy" to find micrometeorites.
Maybe thats true, but again maybe not!
The discriptions I've seen also vary quite a bit. So I hope to gather as
much information as I can and will present it here.
http://www.madsci.org/experiments/archive/913517663.As.html
http://www.discover.com/recent_issue/index.html
DISCOVER Vol. 22 No. 9 (September 2001) "Star Dust"
http://www.eecs.umichdot edu/mathscience/funexperiments/agesubject/lessons/jpl/micromet.html
http://freeweb.pdqdot net/headstrong/met.htm
More to come soon I hope!
Jim
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