Meteors

[DSMITH]

for anyone wandering what a good detector would be for seeing meteors

A friend of mine has several meteors that have been verified as being space rocks, some he has are pretty good size, being inquisitive i asked him to bring over a couple so I could test how they would respond and sound on a detector since I personally have not found a meteor myself and having the inquisitive mind that I do he accommodated my request, surprisingly the detector that gave the best response to the ones my friend brought over was not what I was expecting, since I have several detectors I tested a few of the detectors I own.

started out with one of the Legends I have, the Legend would not give a good response in any mode except the gold mode, I tried using every mode in the Legend and every Multi,and single frequencies while in All Metal which is the way I detect 99% of the time I use no discrimination at all, in all modes other than gold mode I could not get the legend to give a response, but in gold mode the response was there but a very low quiet rise in the threshold, it was a sound that had I been searching for nuggets at the time I might have stopped and done some investigation maybe, it was just a slight little rise in the threshold in gold mode this was kind of surprising to me

The second detector I tested on the Meteors my friend brought over was the Axiom I started out with the 11x7 DD and then switched to the 11x7 Mono, after ground balancing and doing a frequency shift I started out with my settings in Fine, Slow, threshold at -5 sensitivity at 3 and volume at 15, after setting everything up in the Axiom I first did a Iron check over a nail which you could plainly tell the nail was a iron target (a do not dig me target), so then I proceeded to swing over the Meteors while using the Iron Check and this is where the response from the Iron check surprised me there was absolutely no Iron response on those meteors at all it gave a good clean sound that I would have stopped and dug, after performing the Iron Check with the Axiom I proceeded to swing over the meteors as though I was actually detecting, this again was where the Axiom surprised me completely it gave a response all be it a very low response, with the settings I had set but it was a very low, audible high low response like it was a very small nugget, Increased the sensitivity in the Axiom to 4 which did seem to increase the response a little more, I also increased the Threshold up to 5 which seemed to also have a better response by making the Meteors a little more audible when I swung over them.

The third Detector I tried was My Garrett 24K, with the 6 inch round coil, this is the detector that really surprised me completely for anyone that does not know the

Garrett 24K is a 48 KHz single frequency gold detector, yes it will see other targets like coins and other things but in my mind it was designed for the specific intent of hunting gold nuggets, at least that is what I use it for,  anyhow I ground Balanced the 24K set the threshold to where I could barely hear it without headphones, set the volume to boost 2 and proceeded to swing over the meteors my friend had brought over, the 24K had a surprisingly loud dig me response to those meteors, that would have stopped anyone in their tracks

the one thing that really surprised me was when swinging over those meteors with the Iron Check on the Axiom is the iron Check indicated there was no Iron in those meteors, I was always under the impression that meteors contained Iron but not these, the Meteors my friend has was verified as being actual space rocks

the other thing that really surprised me was just how good of a dig me response the Garrett 24K gave on those space rocks, personally speaking if I was going to go out with the soul purpose of detecting meteors the Garrett 24K is the detector I would grab for the task, had I been a betting man I would have bet the Axiom would have been the detector that seen those space rocks the best but man was I surprised.

By doing these test what it clearly confirmed in my mind is it is not always the most expensive, or the detector with the most settings like Multi frequency and things like that, that can make you finds, its choosing the rite detector for the task at hand.   

The one thing to keep in mind is while I was performing this test I did not use headphones with any of the detectors, had I been using headphones there is a high possibility that all the detectors I used to do this test those targets most likely would have been heard better. 

[jasong]

To my knowledge almost all meteorites that contain metallic iron also contain metallic nickel - the two occur together in alloy form. Alloys are not equal to their component parts, the alloy acts like its own thing in many or most respects.

This probably accounts for the metal detector not ID'ing specifically as iron.

Some meteorites also contain trace amounts of other native metals including gold, PGM's, etc. Though I doubt those are detectable by metal detectors, but may alter the characteristics of the alloy somewhat.

[DSMITH]

1 hour ago, jasong said:

To my knowledge almost all meteorites that contain metallic iron also contain metallic nickel - the two occur together in alloy form. Alloys are not equal to their component parts, the alloy acts like its own thing in many or most respects.

This probably accounts for the metal detector not ID'ing specifically as iron.

Some meteorites also contain trace amounts of other native metals including gold, PGM's, etc. Though I doubt those are detectable by metal detectors, but may alter the characteristics of the alloy somewhat.

I have never detected for Meteors so I have no clue, all I can do is report what I observed with the three detector's I tried, I always had the impression a meteor would give a iron tone if you swung over one but these only gave a tone like you would expect a nugget to give it kind of surprised me, what I observed, my Garrett 24K was the most surprising to me and the fact the Axiom Iron Check said there was no Iron in either Meteor he brought with him, it was really eye opening, I did set down and started reading about space rocks and according to what I read some of them contain no iron in them what was even more puzzling even though the Axiom Iron Check said there was no Iron in them both were attracted to a magnet which is very odd to me.

[jasong]

Metal detectors aren't spectrometers, discrimination doesn't identify metals in a sample, they just guess at it and are often wrong.

Don't rely on a metal detector to tell you if there is or isn't iron in anything. They will tell you solid gold is iron, and rusty iron is silver. And then it'll tell you something completely different on the same targets buried in different ground. Again, they are not spectrometers, they just detect the presence of metal, type of metal is a "best guess".

[MSC]

I have found metorites (3) with my GPX5000 while in gold mode. One was 90% burried in soil when my detector went off, turned out to be the best one I have seen and has fusion crust. Good luck. 

[All_Metal_Mode]

Metallic meteorites are odd ducks, they are all different kinds of compositions. Many of the metallic ones contain very large chromium crystals and silica within the iron matrix. A detector looking for the signature of man made decaying iron isn’t going to see this material as iron even if the discrimination was perfect.

If it’s metal just about any detector will see one of these depending on depth and mineralized ground/trash. What I have seen are the powerful rare-earth magnets meteorite hunters carry to sort out likely targets, since the composition of these metallic meteorites tends to make them highly magnetic (tending to shoot towards the magnet field like a bullet).

[MSC]

All_Metal_Mode, you are correct, I have found metorites using just a rare earth magnet taped to an adjustable ski pole while walking or sometimes riding on a 4 wheeler.