Buzzard Coulee Meteorite Search 2

I made a second trip to Buzzard Coulee to help Alan Hildebrand's Unversity of Calgary team search for meteorites. I arrived for lunch on April 22, 2009 and stayed until the end of the afternoon search on April 23. Overnight I slept in a small pup tent on the U of C site at Buzzard Coulee. It was -7 Celcius that night, cold when the blankets fell off the sleeping bag.. Here are some photos from the second trip.


Ellen Milley lead the search, here seen recording the position of one of our finds in the field with the ever present poo.. At the end of the day, the meteorites were brought back to the site trailer (an oil field standard rental) and here Alan Dyer and Ellen survey the day's finds. Ellen weighs all the finds at the end of the day.


After the search on April 22, Larry Gundrum of Winnipeg dropped in to report on finds he made in a nearby field on which he had the owner's permission to search. I offered to go to the field with him to get GPS readings on the location of his meteorite finds. As we were leaving the field, I spotted this 6.948 gm meteorite.


Then we headed for the Lone Rock Cafe were they had this excellent Buzzard Coulee meteorite display.


Here's a view of the field site as seen from near my pup tent. I had my 18 inch telescope - in the back of my truck there - but clouds kept it from being used.


The next day, April 23, I found another small meteorite, 4.106 gm. At first Ellen didn't believe it was a meteroite, but a closer look later in the trailer convinced her it was.


My next find was a bit bigger at 157.384 gm (about $4700 at prevailing prices). The inside of the meteorite, visible via a natural chip, shows the strange white inclusions that defy current solar system formation models. Thanks to Alan Dyer for taking my photo.


My last find of the day was a 80.986 gm meteorite that I picked out of Ellen's path msec before she would have seen it.

Well, I'm not that great of a photographer since I missed getting photos of all the great people who were there for the search (and I'm bad with names, especially last names): Lynne, Sid, Mark Zalcik, Alan Dyer, Mel Stouffer, Gunjan and Regan. Another great trip because of them.