I was given a small piece of “Meteorite Oxide” from Meteor Crater in Arizona. I of course had to put it under my microscope to see what was there to find.

Well actually first I had to check it with a geiger counter. Sadly nothing was detected.

The label on it says it is 92% iron, 7% nickel and 1% other materials.

To give a sense of scale here is a shot with a ruler.

I then noticed some smaller pieces on one end, so I flipped it over and zoomed in on the right side.

The last image is probably around 120x magnification or so. The smaller pieces appear to be fused to the larger, but I failed in my attempt to get a picture that could show this clearly. I then used high tech methodologies to test to see if it was magnetic (well ok, a fridge magnet), however it doesn’t seem to be overly magnetic. Or at least not strongly enough for me to detect.

I then just scanned around looking for interesting highlights.

The other side is more or less the same as the side shown. In random areas there appears to be reduced metal but I’m not sure if that’s actually bits of metal or regions that are just over exposed. The microscope I used is decidedly low end. I also used an optical 40x microscope but failed to find the same regions suggesting that it’s just over exposure. I’ll have to try again…