In Search Of Micrometeorites

The above image is what they call a micrometeorite, I snapped a pic of it at 400x with the Celestron LCD Digital Microscope. Tons of these things fall from space daily, some in your backyard, you have probably been hit by one, they are very cool, again you are looking at something from space that is a remnant from the building blocks of our solar system, some 4.5 billion years ago.

You too can be the proud owner of one of these, how do you go about collecting your own? well the best places to look are where they are most likely to gather, as they come down from space they for example land on your roof and are washed into your eavestrough by the rain and down to your downspout, those are great places to look, I've found many in those places.


Or you can put out a piece of paper for a few hours in your backyard and check it out later to see if there are any micrometeorites on it, now they are kind of small, anywhere from around 25-350 microns, a hair for example is 50-70 microns, but the good news, the metal micrometeorites are made up of iron or nickel or both so they are attracted to a magnet, just take a magnet out, run it over the paper and anything that sticks to it is a candidate to be a micrometeorite.


The above image is a 10x20 ft poly sheet I left out overnight on top of the mall roof I work at, came back in the morning carefully brushed off the debris into a large pail, and took the pail back to as I like to call it, the micrometeorite lab in my basement, I found the micrometeorite in the top image on this poly.


Up until now that's about as far as I was able to go, now with the microscope I'm able to actually see the round metal micrometeorite up close and personal, to see the scaring and pitting caused by the interaction with our atmosphere as the micrometeorite is falling to the ground.


The next step is to weed out stuff that may not be a micrometeorite, I do this with the help of my handy dandy Wal-Mart light magnifier combo, after all microscope time is expensive,..... not really just like saying that, through the magnifier I see a couple of possible not micrometeorites. After I remove them, I rub a small screwdriver back and forth on the magnet to magnetize it, then rub the screwdriver on the particles in question that may be micrometeorites, then it's off to the microscope.

Now you'll notice I've taken many pics to guide you though the complex procedure just in case you want to collect your own micrometeorites, but there is one pic I didn't manage to get....... the look on my Wife's face as she happened upon my lab while I was working my way through the dirt to find micrometeorites, if looks could kill, I'd be a dead man.

Wife " What .....are.....you.....doing?"

Me " Collecting micrometeorites"

I think she is cool with it now, I mean after I explained what a micrometeorite was and showed her some pics. I'll leave you with a video I took just after I found the above micrometeorite, just to show you what stuff looks like under a microscope, every thing is at 100x, usually do 100x, wide angle, then when I think I've found something I go up to 400x.