Meteorite Lecture Ucla June 25

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June 2017 News from the UCLA Meteorite Gallery

One of a series of monthly letters sent to visitors to the UCLA Meteorite Gallery and to others who requested to be on the mailing list.

The Meteorite Gallery (Geology room 3697) is open with a docent present every Sunday from 1 until 4 with the exception of the last two Sundays in the calendar year. And it is open every work day from 9 until 4 but without a docent. It is not open Saturdays.

We remind you that our website address is: http://www.meteorites.ucla.edu/. There you can find a map of our corner of the UCLA campus and instructions for parking in structure 2.

At 2:30 on Sunday Jun 25 the speaker at our Gallery Event is Dr. Frank Kyte. The former manager of the UCLA electron microprobe and winner of the Barringer Prize of the Meteoritical Society for his research on the use of elements like iridium to trace the presence of impact deposits in sediments. His topic is "Eltanin, the largest meteorite of which intact fragments are preserved".

Summary: The largest recovered meteorite was discovered in the Eltanin region at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean about 1500 km west of the southern tip of South America. It has been documented by sediment cores collected during a series of German oceanographic cruises. About 2.5 million years ago a one-kilometer-diameter asteroid impacted the ocean and deposited more than one kilogram of meteorites per square meter over thousands of square kilometers. About 90% of this was melted by the shock of the impact, but 10% is undamaged meteorite fragments.

The lecture is in Geology 3656, just 40 yards west of the UCLA Meteorite Gallery.

Our next Gallery Lecture will occur on Sunday July 16. The speaker is UCLA Professor David Paige. He will speak on "Ice deposits at the poles of the Moon and Mercury". Surficial ice evaporates relatively quickly if exposed to sunlight in the inner solar system. However, some parts of craters near the poles of Mercury and the Earth's Moon are in permanent shadow. If a water molecule lands in such a spot it is expected to stay there until evaporated due to heat from a micrometeorite or a photon from a star other than the Sun. New spacecraft data support the interpretation that there is ice in these shadowed regions.

Reminder: You can find the UCLA Meteorite Gallery on Social Media. Please like us on Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/UCLAMeteorites ) and follow us on Twitter (@UCLAMeteorites) and Instagram (uclameteorites).

JTW

UCLA Meteorite Collection Geology Building, Room 3697 565 Charles Young Drive East Los Angeles, CA 90095