Find the meteorite in the moraine. 

Antarctica really got our memo and today we were greeted with sunshine, blue skies, and a moderate wind only. We uncovered our skidoos and prepped everything for a long 10 hour day in the field. We went back to the ice field we started to search 2 days ago before we were so rudely interrupted by the weather. We started to sweep some of the blue ice and then settled for foot searching the moraines for most of the day. Moraine searching is great because you actually move around and thus it is easier to stay warm. But at the same time moraine searching is harder than sweeping the blue ice because you really have to be able to pick out the extraterrestrial rock from all the surrounding terrestrial rocks.
One way to distinguish meteorites in the field from terrestrial rocks is by their black fusion crust. When a meteoroid enters the Earth atmosphere it starts to heat up on the outside due to the friction (this stage usually can be seen as a “shooting star” called a meteor). The outer few millimeters of the rock will melt and mostly ablate away. Once the rock touches the ground we call it a meteorite. The outside is coated with the glassy remnant of that melt. It is black and has a shine to it. Meteorites also have rounded edges, another side effect from going through Earth’s atmosphere.
However, the meteorites we find are not pristine falls. They have been transported by glaciers, knocked against other rocks, and been exposed to the katabatic wind. So oftentimes, the meteorites we find are partially broken, having only some of their original fusion crust. They may have some sharp broken edges. They may show some of their insides too.
So, as an ANSMET veteran (Rob C.) says, meteorites are black except when they are not, they are shiny except when they are not, sometimes they look rusty except when they are not, they are rounded except when they are not. So really what we are looking for is something that is different from all other rocks, pattern recognition so to speak of. Look at a moraine and find the one rock that sticks out, that is different from all other rocks and take a closer look. The Mt. Cecily/ Mt. Raymond region also is home to the Kirkpatrick basalt, a unit that produces a lot of shiny black polished rocks that look just like meteorites. Making our life harder. Nonetheless we recovered 19 meteorites today, one of which is an iron meteorite. That brings our count up 109, from which 2 are iron meteorites, and 7 are achondrites. So far so good. The picture today is taken from our moraine search. Can you spot the meteorite? In the next blog I will reveal which of these rocks is the meteorite, but is there really one in there?  😉

-Juliane, Dec. 27th at 10:15pm Mt. Cecily, Antarctica

Editor’s note:   This game shows up in the blog pretty frequently, and is always difficult for the newbies to learn;  but equally amazing is that those same newbies often have the sharpest eyes for aliens after just a few days.  Knowing Juliane,  I’ll vote “trick question”-   either there’s more than one or there’s none.