Around 50,000 years
ago, a nickle-iron meteorite approximately 50 meters long hit the
Earth in what is now Arizona, creating what is known as Meter Crater
or the Barringer Crater. Four and a half years ago, I got to explore
it. I was one of 16 graduate students who participated in the Lunar
and Planetary Institute's Meteor Crater Field Camp in September 2011.
It was quite an experience!
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| On the rim of Meteor Crater - September 2011 |
I'll start out by
admitting that I was not exactly a happy camper during the eight day
field camp because I am not a camper at all. I enjoy comfortable
beds, temperature controlled rooms, clean bathrooms, vehicles that
can take me long distances, and other modern conveniences. To be
fair, camping at Meteor Crater isn't fully camping. They had bathroom
facilities with decent showers, electrical outlet ports outside, and
wifi. I brought my laptop and connected to the internet every morning
and evening. Even so, eight days is a long time for a non-camper to
camp.
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| The Meteor Crater camp site - September 2011 |
I was also quite
out-of-place with my peers. Although the program was open to
geologists and planetary scientists, it heavily leaned toward
geology. I had taken a graduate-level geology class and was studying
lunar impact craters, but it was soon clear that I was the least
knowledgeable about geology in the pack. Additionally, my fellow
classmates seemed to love rocks and their excitement to stare
endlessly at rocks was genuine. I think rocks are cool, but my
interest in the minutia is short-lived. The program leader quickly
identified me as a geologist fraud and took a disliking to me. We
didn't see eye-to-eye on space policy, either. Despite my
inadequacies, I learned quite a bit of geology from my peers and
became the group's photographer with my DSLR.
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| Group at work - September 2011 |
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| Someone else took this one. I'm the short girl in purple - September 2011 |
The landscapes in
the desert are gorgeous and plenty photogenic. We hiked around the
crater rim, down to the center and back up again, around the crater
ejecta blanket, and in an old quarry. Abandoned mining equipment and
infrastructure littered the field like an archaeological site. Recent
rains caused wildflowers to burst with color. And my team always
seems to be posing in an action shot among the rocks. The sights were
truly spectacular.
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| Wildflowers blooming - September 2011 |
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| Abandoned wheel - September 2011 |
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| Standing in the ruins with abandoned buildings yonder - September 2011 |
On the second full
day, former astronaut Tom Jones joined us in our hike down the
crater. I had met him once before and once since, and he always seems
like such a cool guy. Apollo astronauts used to train for the lunar
terrain in the crater, and NASA relics are still kept in the crater's
museum, so the area has a history of astronaut activity. Tom gave us
a presentation on potentially hazardous near Earth asteroids, a
relevant subject in an area once hit by a near Earth asteroid.
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| Posing with astronaut Tom Jones - September 2011 |
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| Resting at the bottom of the crater - September 2011 |
If I wasn't a
geologist before I arrived at the field camp, I certainly wasn't
going to leave as one. Day after day, we undertook laborious tasks
that I can't quite believe modern geologists still do. We counted
pebbles by hand. We measured pebbles with rulers. We took location
measurements of boulders with outdated handheld GPS receivers. We
categorized everything we saw with our own eyes. It seemed to me that
aerial remote sensing with good software could have accomplished most
of what we did a lot more easily, but graduate students are cheap
labor and we were out there for the experience.
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| Working among the rocks - September 2011 |
I do appreciate the
experience and I'm glad to have participated in the program. Real
science was done, and in a small way, I contributed. I'm a co-author
on conference proceedings from the Lunar and Planetary Science
Conference: Extensional Faulting of the Overturned Coconino Ejecta
Layer and Emplacement of Fallback Breccia at Barringer Meteorite
Crater (aka Meteor Crater). But honestly, I'm more proud of my
photography.
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| Self-portrait on the cliff - September 2011 |
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| Sunset at Meteor Crater - September 2011 |
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