ABSTRACT
Doppler weather radar imaging enabled the rapid recovery of the Sutter's Mill meteorite after a rare 4-kiloton of TNT-equivalent asteroid impact over the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in northern California. The recovered meteorites survived a record high-speed entry of 28.6 kilometers per second from an orbit close to that of Jupiter-family comets (Tisserand's parameter = 2.8 ± 0.3). Sutter's Mill is a regolith breccia composed of CM (Mighei)-type carbonaceous chondrite and highly reduced xenolithic materials. It exhibits considerable diversity of mineralogy, petrography, and isotope and organic chemistry, resulting from a complex formation history of the parent body surface. That diversity is quickly masked by alteration once in the terrestrial environment but will need to be considered when samples returned by missions to C-class asteroids are interpreted.
ABSTRACT
The period of two-dimensional modulation in Ca2CoSi2O7 varies with temperature (q = 0.285-1/3). The change in the modulated structure with the variation of q has been clarified by the construction of the structures using various q values and the modulation amplitudes determined at 293 K [q = 0.2913 (1), tetragonal]. The features of the modulated structures are characterized by the formation of CaO6 polyhedra and the variable distribution of bundles along the c-axis, composed of four arrays of CaO6 polyhedra and an array of CoO4 tetrahedra. The formation of octagonal arrangements of the bundles is a typical feature of the structures in the incommensurate phase. Large-scale regularities with sizes much larger than the modulation wavelength are also formed in the structures.
