Cosmochemistry
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Articles that made the journal cover |
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MAPS 1998
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Meteoritics and Planetary Science January
1998. Vol. 33, no. 1. Cover: A
cathodoluminescence photomosaic of a thin section of Apollo 14 lunar highland
regolith breccia (14318,6). The section is -2 cm across. The sample's
brecciated texture is readily apparent in CL, with clasts being light blue
and the matrix dark but containing a variety of smaller luminescent objects.
Among the small objects in the matrix are crystalline lunar spherules (CLS)
that are the subject of a paper by Symes et al. in the present issue.
The CLS, often referred to as "lunar chondrules" or
"chondrule-like objects," are the ubiquitous, generally circular
objects in the matrix with distinctive yellow CL. Steve Symes and his
colleagues at Arkansas obtained data on the size and abundance of the CLS and
the ballistics of their formation by impact; and with colleagues at the
Johnson Space Center, he obtained compositional data for the CLS and their
phases. Symes et al. conclude that the CLS are crystallized melt
spherules from the impact that produced the Imbrium Basin. They argue that
meteoritic chondrules are also crystallized impact melt spherules from
impacts on their much smaller asteroidal parent bodies.
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