Astronomy Picture of the Day 12-26-02

NASA ^ | 12-26-02 | Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell

[petuniasevan]

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2002 December 26

Searching for Meteorites in Antarctica
Credit & Copyright: Ralph P. Harvey (CWRU), Antarctic Search for Meteorites Program, NASA, NSF

Explanation: Where is the best place on Earth to find meteorites? Although meteors fall all over the world, they usually just sink to the bottom of an ocean, are buried by shifting terrain, or are easily confused with terrestrial rocks. At the bottom of the Earth, however, in East Antarctica, huge sheets of blue ice remain pure and barren. When traversing such a sheet, a dark rock will stick out. These rocks have a high probability of being true meteorites -- likely pieces of another world. An explosion or impact might have catapulted these meteorites from the Moon, Mars, or even an asteroid, yielding valuable information about these distant worlds and our early Solar System. Small teams of snowmobiling explorers so far have found thousands. Pictured above, ice-trekkers search a field 25-kilometers in front of Otway Massif in the Transantarctic Mountain Range during the Antarctic summer of 1995-1996.

[petuniasevan]

Does meteorite-hunting in Antarctica sound like a great way to use up your vacation days? Book soon; the austral summer's here! Sunshine 24 hours a day and relatively mild temperatures await the intrepid traveler.

Seriously, the ANSMET project DOES accept a few grad students each year for meteorite searches. Here's the link :

I wanna GO! How do I volunteer?

[petuniasevan]

[MeekOneGOP]

Very interesting !

[RightWhale]

There is a lot of Antarctic activity that doesn't involve camping out on the ice. For example, ship expeditions go down there regularly and the cruise around measuring things of scientific interest.