Stu, despite his better judgement, has leant me his fragments of the Martian Zagami Meteorite...

http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/snc/zagami.html

I've promised to not eat it, or use it to fertilise geraniums...and I've tried to photograph it as well.

Scanning at 2400dpi was quite good (an excellent way of documenting 'thin' things) and using my Sigma 17-70mm lens..backwards...gave good macro

I can almost convince myself of some olivine grains in there if I stretch the imagery a little.

At something like $3200/gramme, this stuff is valuable. It's a tiny tiny hundredths of gram I'd say - but still about 140x more valuable than gold.

The temptation to eat some must be almost overwhelming!

Edit: OK mild silliness aside regarding OM NOM NOM NOMing Mars, this is seriously cool. Who needs MSR when you have planetary bombardment and orbital mechanics. But really Doug, what we want to know is: 'what does it taste like?'

If you just want an SNC, shergottite is only about $500-$600 gm; see, for example, http://www.meteoritemarket.com/SAU008.htm

I got a little piece for $80 a few years back. Try convincing family and friends that's what it is. They look at you like you've been the gullible subject of a con job.

Ditto...but I don't care...I know what it is, and that's all that counts!

BARGAIN

Still not tempted to eat it. I'll leave it to Stu to explain the background to that particular story though.

Wow, great stuff. What does the actual color look to the eye - closer to the red color seen with the camera or grayish seen in the scans?

A darkish grey - the scan of the whole bag has it about right, if a bit bright. It would be very hard to suggest there's any colour in it with the naked eye.

I have a tiny shaving of it. Almost invisible

I'm sorry for wasting a post here, but....

My sleepy morning eyes had to read that twice to get it, but the second time was enough and produced animalistic memories that had me laughing out loud!


Thank you Dan!


-- Pertinax

Doug, I always scan my meteorites directly on the scanner glass with a black cloth as background, works great

I'm no authority, but I have looked at some grain mounts in my time. Some of those little greenish grains could be olivine, as you suspected. I see a few whitish rectangular grains that could be feldspar. Some of the dark rectangular grains might be a type of pyroxene.

Mostly it's pretty cool that you have/had in your possession something that was once part of Mars.