The Logical Lizard

The annual Leonid meteor shower is one of the night sky’s most exciting events. Our planet is currently passing through a debris trail left behind in space hundreds of years ago by Comet Tempel-Tuttle. As those small fragments of ice and stone hit our atmosphere at thousands of miles per hour they burn up, producing bright trails known as meteors or shooting stars. Fragments that make it to the surface of the Earth are meteorites, but the diminutive particles that generate the Leonids are too small and friable to survive their passage through our atmosphere.

Artist's impression of a meteor shower

Peak meteor activity is expected to occur between midnight and dawn tonight and into Tuesday morning. Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office stated: “We’re predicting 20 to 30 meteors per hour over the Americas.”

The Leonids take their name from Leo, due to an optical illusion that sometimes make it appear as if they emanate from that constellation.

Tucson’s dark skies are ideal viewing for meteor showers, especially for night owls who are happy to stay up into the wee hours. If you’re so inclined, turn off the house lights, mix up some hot chocolate or a favorite tipple, head outside after midnight, park yourself in a spot with an unobstructed view of the heavens and see what transpires. It may be a memorable celestial show.

Sometime last year, my co-host Steve Arnold and I had a most interesting conversation with LMNO Productions owner, and our Executive Producer, Eric Schotz. He told us that if he was developing a show about, for example, an emergency room, or armed forces veterans returning from overseas, there would be a number of options; a number of different people to interview and work with. “But I can’t go out and get two other guys who do what you do. The show is about you.” So, no pressure.

But really, I am joking. It is an honor and a privilege to find yourself in a situation where major companies have put a great deal of money, time and effort into making a rather unique adventure series about you and your buddy. Steve had me laughing the other day when he said: “I want our show to be the best meteorite hunting program on television!” It is a most unusual topic for a series, but I do know one thing: wherever I go and whatever kind of people I meet there seems to be a universal fascination with our rather odd profession: “Really? You look for meteorites. You mean, like shooting stars?”

The Logical Lizard (left) and professional meteorite hunter Steve Arnold scouting locations for the new "Meteorite Men" TV series. Photograph by Margaret Haddad.

The fact that our work is so unusual and specialized means we are actively involved in nearly every aspect of pre-production: locations, equipment, wardrobe, logistics, scheduling. We even have the pleasure of inviting some favorite academics to appear on the show with us. We are airing on the Science Channel, so Meteorite Men has to be a lot more than just an adventure series. It’s a good mix: Steve and I go out to the wild places, test new gear, develop hunting techniques, do our research, hike, dig, meet weird and colorful characters along the way, and when each adventure draws to a close we head to a lab or university to meet with one of our colleagues in academia. Will any of our finds help shed light on the mysteries of the universe? Well, maybe not every episode, but each fragment of new knowledge is a piece in the puzzle, and it doesn’t hurt to dream.

And anyway, Steve feels people are tuning in to be entertained, not to have the spotlight of universal understanding turned upon them. We’ll figure it out.

Yesterday, a nice gentleman emailed the company offices and ordered a meteorite. He explained it was a gift for his grandson. He had shown the grandson our Meteorite Men pilot, and said that “all he can talk about is growing up to be a meteorite hunter.” The gentleman went on to say:

“PS: Please tell Mr. Notkin that he has replaced Dennis Anderson, driver of the world-famous monster truck Grave Digger, as my grandson’s favorite superhero.”

Well, I thought this comment rather exciting, especially since I used to work in the comic book industry and have always been quite the superhero fan. Especially X-Men, Iron Man and Fantastic Four. Being a bit of a tinkerer, it’s the gadgets and gizmos they use that really move me, and I always particularly liked the way Tony Stark initially devised the Iron Man chest plate to keep his heart going. In the original comic book, it was a piece of Vietcong shrapnel lodged in his chest that threatened his life; in Jon Favreau’s brilliant and apocalyptic film version (that even beats out even the second X-Men film as my favorite superhero movie) the V.C. were replaced by generic Middle East terrorist villains.

Last night, I wrote back to the grandfather, told him his email had made my day, and that we’d be sending along a signed Meteorite Men photo for his grandson, in addition to the order. We always like to send a little gift for kids who enjoyed the show. I then posted an excerpt from his email on my Facebook page (names and personal details removed, of course). Well, this immediately became the most popular status update on my page for some long time. A few friends made comments about action figures in my future (I wish!) but the most unexpected post was:

“Dude, that is so cool! You just saved a kid from redneck future!”

This morning I received a follow-up email from the gentleman:

“About the superhero thing: I made the mistake of explaining to him that in as much as you can’t jump higher than the tallest building or stop bullets with your bare hands you couldn’t really be considered a superhero. My grandson then explained, very slowly so I wouldn’t get lost, that while some superheroes were born with powers, like Superman, most are normal humans who use technical devices to make them superheroes. He said that made you like Batman.”

Superheroes? Unfortunately not really, but we do use secret weapons whenever possible. Photograph by Caroline Palmer © Aerolite Meteorites

I am hiring the grandson as soon as he’s old enough!

The gentleman then gave me a friendly warning: I should be careful about giving his grandson too much encouragement, because in about ten years the Meteorite Men “may have some serious competition.” I’ll welcome it, and his prediction at once reminded me of the end of my favorite classic Star Trek episode “A Piece of the Action”—that’s “the gangster one” for you non-Trek fans. In the final scene, Bones owns up that he has accidentally left his communicator on the surface of the alien planet Iotia. Spock posits that since they are a highly intelligent and imitative humanoid race, the Iotians will doubtless take the communicator apart, discover how it works, and adapt the new technology for their own purposes. Captain Kirk wraps up the episode by joking: “Well, in a few years, the Iotians may demand a piece of our action.”

I found the episode online and it was great fun to watch that scene again—for research purposes only, of course. By the way, have you noticed how these Internet TV sites are cropping up all over the place and have wasted no time in cramming commercials into their “broadcasts”? Forget I mentioned it. If you want to see “PIece of the Action,” please buy, borrow, or rent the DVD. Really, it’s too fabulous an episode to be chopped up with toothpaste ads.

So, much as I might have wished, as a child, to be an actual superhero, the most satisfying thing in real life is to inspire—by what we do—a little boy to dream big and follow his heart.

Well, I could go for the Meteorite Men action figure too, I guess.

When a plea from a British school teacher was posted to an international science listserve, Nevada meteorite hunter Ralph “Sonny” Clary made the educator’s seemingly impossible request come true.

In May of 2009, Matthew Smith a teacher in Liverpool, England sent an email to an online forum devoted to meteorites. With a very small acquisitions budget, Mr. Smith was hoping to acquire a few space rocks, to assist with presentations for his students. Sonny Clary, a highly experienced meteorite hunter based in Nevada had just the thing.

Meteorite hunter Ralph "Sonny" Clary takes a compass bearing during a desert expedition

In 2007 Sonny made an extraordinary discovery on an ancient dry lake bed in the American Southwest. While scouting for possible hunting locations he came across a debris field of stone meteorite fragments. He collected numerous pieces and donated representative samples to academia, so the new meteorite could be studied and classified.

After reading Mr. Smith’s request, Sonny packed up more than 90 of the meteorites he’d found, and shipped them to the UK—as a cosmic gift.

More than 90 space rocks donated to a British school by Sonny arrive in the UK

When asked how much the meteorites were worth, Sonny replied: “I feel the true value of these meteorites is being lucky enough to hunt for and find them, and being able to share that excitement with the students by donating to their school and allowing them to experience holding and owning a rock from the asteroid belt. This may help spark the next generation of meteorite enthusiasts.”

He is modest indeed. In total, the meteorite specimens that Sonny donated weighed about five pounds. A conservative estimate would put their retail value at $2,000.

Sonny (left) and his great friend, the late Professor Jim Kriegh planning a desert expedition

Mr. Smith will be writing an article about Sonny’s generous donation for an upcoming issue of Meteorite magazine. The quarterly science journal is published by the Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences in Fayetteville, but the editorial team, Nancy and Dr. Larry Lebofsky, are Tucson residents.

English school kids showing off their new space rocks

Looking at the photographs of the enthralled English schoolchildren holding their new meteorites reminded me of something Alexis R. Faust, educator and executive director of the Flandrau Science Center said to me during a recent visit: “It gives you a different perspective on the world when you see it through the eyes of children. It’s rejuvenating.”

The author, looking very haggard (above left) and Sonny after a particularly grueling expedition. Sonny is an expert camper and outdoorsman and I've learned a lot from him.

Sonny Clary is a great example of how one individual can get a classrom full of children excited about science. Those look like some happy kids to me, and I can only imagine how amazed I would have been—when I was a school boy in England back in the 1970s—if an American adventurer had mailed me a space rock.

My compliments to Sonny.

Yesterday I received a phone call from a most serious sounding web promotion/search engine optimization guy. He represented “the biggest company in the industry” and claimed to have hundreds of thousands of clients. Not himself, obviously, but the company. Maybe it was true; don’t know, don’t care. For many years I handled my own web promotion and now I have a local tech genius who consults for me. I like to spend my money here in town whenever possible.

Back to the phone call: The caller seemed much more like a salesman than a tech person, bandying about phrases such as “activating all your listings” and “checking your keywords for optimization,” which are semi-nonsensical anyway, and probably intended to befuddle the web novice. He then asked me to confirm that I was the owner of megaspacenews.info and went on to exclaim, very enthusiastically, how sure he was that I would be wanting to expand my site and promote it on a national, or maybe even international level.

I couldn’t help laughing, but I did try not to laugh directly at him.

“That site is an April Fool’s prank. I’m a science writer and that is a one-page site that I put up as a joke.”

“Oh. I guess you won’t be needing our services then,” he replied, and apologized for calling me. It was immediately clear that I wouldn’t be spending any money with him. Game over.

The fake graphic banner for one of my fake April Fool's websites

I have the greatest affection and respect for my colleagues in the meteorite world. Well, nearly all of them. There are a couple of extremely nasty people in my field, but we can save that story for another day. Let me rephrase my statement: I have the greatest respect and admiration for nearly all of my colleagues in the meteorite world, but I am also a career prankster, and I do so enjoy a complicated little joke at the expense of my friends and peers. I go for “the long prank” as a con artist might say, or “the overly elaborate prank.” A burning paper bag of something unpleasant on the neighbor’s porch just does not do it for me.

So, when my calendar announces it is late March I start thinking about what type of April Fool’s jape I will foist upon my usually good-natured science comrades. Since we are all such a bunch of modern Internet junkies, I usually end up with something that lives and laughs within the digital realm. The past few years I have gone to considerable trouble to construct fake websites featuring a science article that looks and feels genuine, but with content so absurd that only the most stoned readers could possibly think it real. At least, it seems that way to me. The truth is, many people still get taken in.

This spring I purchased the domain name megaspacenews.info, for the amazingly low price of $1.99. There was some kind of .info sale going on. I guess that domain suffix is not as hot as the originators hoped it might be. I came up with the tag line “BECAUSE IT’S YOUR UNIVERSE TOO,” and went on to type up a nonsensical ditty intentionally filled with misinformation, entitled “Bush to Join Panel on Meteorite Alertness, Defense and Evasion” and built the site around it. I tossed in a few genuine web ads to make the thing look real, added a nice astronomy background image, inserted a whole lot of links to fabricated stories (and one real one that sounds crazy but is actually true: “Texas dog finds rock from outer space”) and, shazam!, a fake website in no time. Actually, it takes a lot of time, and one of my ex-girlfriends used to chastise me endlessly: “Don’t you have anything better to do with your time?” And of course the answer to that was: “No, I really don’t. Time spent on April Fool’s is time spent well.”

So, here is my April Fool’s joke for 2009. Don’t miss “THIS WEEK’S TOP ASTRONOMY AND SCIENCE STORIES” links at the bottom of the page; my favorite part.

The good people in meteorites and astronomy are not the only ones to be targeted by my deformed sense of humor. That just wouldn’t be right. I’ve had my fair share of fun with esteemed colleagues in biology and paleontology as well. A few years ago, my good friend Tom Caggiano—a highly skilled fossil hunter with a devilish sense of humor, and secretary of the New Jersey Paleontological Society—invited me to concoct a bogus article for the April edition of their journal, the Paleontograph.

I wrote a lengthy review of a book that never existed, entitled: Bone Idol: My Life in Time. I so amused myself devising quotes in the author’s overblown writing style, that I called up a friend, in the middle of the night, and read a few hundred words to her. I laughed myself silly; she was not amused.

I fabricated this cover for Arthur Burleigh Chaplin's non-existent autobiography, as part of an April Fool's joke on the paleontology community.

Ostensibly the autobiography of a famous paleontologist, Arthur Burleigh Chaplin, Bone Idol is a Forrest Gump-like tale in which “Burley” survives the Titantic’s fatal 1912 voyage, appears in one of the films by his cousin, Charlie Chaplin, talks his way onto Roy Chapman Andrews’ Central Asiatic Expedition of 1922, flies with Eagle Squadron during the Battle of Britain in World War II, works for Special Operations, discovers some kind of strange new dinosaur, gets involved in shenanigans during the Cold War, moves to Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s and lives out the last of his 102 years in the kooky town of Jerome, Arizona. In other words, a ludicrous fantasy, but it was great fun to write. I even designed a cover for the book.

Quite recently, I received an email from the editor of a paleontology publication asking, very courteously, if she could quote from my review of Bone Idol for their newsletter. I wrote back, thanked her for her interest and said of course she could use anything she liked, but was she aware that the article was an April Fool’s prank and the book didn’t actually exist (although I so enjoyed creating it that perhaps it lives on in some alternate universe). Shortly thereafter, I received a very terse reply: “Well, I guess we won’t be needing it then.” (I think she was embarrassed, poor thing).

My regular readers will now immediately understand why I am concerned about the veracity of information presented on the web, as discussed in last week’s tale: “Ning Probably Means ‘Unisex,’ The Marginal Merits Of Wikipedia, And William Gibson Was Right Again.” If I can cook up a fake website in a few hours, then so can a lot of other people.

The enthusiastic salesman who called and tried to convince me to spend upwards of $70 a month on optimizing a one-page joke website didn’t spend much time looking at the site himself. There is just the one goofy made-up story there, along with some links that lead to “error message” pages. Yes, they are keen to sell you web optimization services, but I don’t think they are doing a whole lot of research on the sites they target.

Well, I suppose I have really let the cat out of the bag now and you all think you will be ready for me next April. Hah! Now I shall be forced to devise an April Fool’s prank of Moriarty-like complexity to perplex my dear TucsonCitizen.com readers. And really, I do it all out of affection.

The first known mention can be found in the U of A Register from 1892, which rather grandly states the university will “make the Museum of Geology and Mineralogy an adequate representative of the ores and minerals of Arizona, as well as a place for the deposit of everything illustrative of the practical workings of the mines, mills, and furnaces.”

Curatorial Specialist Sven Bailey patiently studied the history of the University of Arizona Mineral Collection and recorded the five other temporary homes it occupied before relocating to the spacious and airy basement of the Flandrau Science Center.

A view across part of the main gallery of the University of Arizona's wonderful mineral museum. Photograph by Geoffrey Notkin

If you walk into the Science Center, past the planetarium, maybe pausing for a moment to admire the Mars Wall, and then scamper down two long flights of stairs decorated with brightly painted murals, you will come upon a geologist’s dreamscape. The main collection comprises some 19,000 specimens, plus 7,000 micromounts. Of special delight to me was the mysterious Silverbell iron meteorite. Discovered in 1939, somewhere northwest of Tucson, the exact find location has been lost to science, and the UA Mineral Museum has the largest piece in the world. In addition, I was intrigued by a mock-up of the famous Tucson Ring meteorite, appearing as it did back in the 1800s during the least glamorous part of its life (it was once used as an anvil in the Tucson presidio, and has now been promoted to the rather magnificent centerpiece of the Smithsonian’s meteorite display in Washington, D.C.).

At the mineral museum, a detailed recreation with full-scale models demonstrates how the Tucson Ring and Carleton iron meteorites were once used in a blacksmith's shop in frontier-era Tucson. The actual meteorites are now part of the Smithsonian's collection in Washington, D.C. Photograph courtesy of Flandrau Science Center.

“Our collection is actively used for research, and the curator is currently building a new mineral database,” Sven tells me. He is a tall, soft spoken, and thoughtful man. He seems wonderfully at ease in the beautiful and elegant underground collection; he could almost be the custodian of a secret treasure mine. “Some of our meteorites and minerals are studied by Planetary Sciences,” he continues. “And they are also available for students. Some university instructors lead field trips to the museum and assign extra credit.” Now, that’s my idea of school Extra credit for looking at rocks!

This spectacular example of the mineral pyrargyrite from Hartenstein Germany is just one of 19,000 specimens in the museum's main collection. Photograph by Sven Bailey / Courtesy of UA Mineral Museum

The mineral museum welcomes school programs, and children of all ages have enjoyed the remarkable collection with a concentration of students from First through Eighth Grades. Last year over 100 school groups visited the Flandrau and the mineral museum, and that translates into a lot of kids getting a first-hand look at geology, mineralogy, mining history, and meteorites.

The museum is also open to the general public and Sven and his colleagues are available to answer mineral-related questions. For many years, Senior Curatorial Specialist Shirley Wetmore, served in a “first contact” capacity with visitors who stopped by with samples hoping they had found a meteorite or rare mineral. Shirley was universally liked, did a great deal to further the public’s understanding of rocks, minerals, and meteorites, and recently retired from the museum.

Sven is a hard working man, handling the equivalent of several different jobs at once. In addition to showing visitors around and answering questions, he is engaged in an ongoing project to photograph the mineral collection (see photos on this page), keeps the website up to date, and helps design and coordinate signage and special exhibitions.

A large and intricate specimen of natural silver from the museum's collection. Photograph by Sven Bailey / Courtesy of UA Mineral Museum

It always feels good to see people happy in their work and Sven is especially enthusiastic when he leads me into a back room, opens an impressive safe, and produces a genuinely staggering specimen of leaf gold. Found on the Crystalline-Alabama Claim in Jamestown, California, it was recently acquired by the museum with the rest of the Hubert de Monmonier collection, a significant group of minerals, never before seen in public. Approximately 870 pieces, including some very important specimens, and 300 books, were donated by the de Monmonier estate. A stunning exhibit of some of the finest pieces from that collection is currently on display in the Flandrau’s main exhibition space.

So, doesn’t all of this sound great? A world-class mineral museum with active ongoing research programs, rare meteorites, beautiful displays, a friendly, enthusiastic and knowledgeable staff keen to interact with, and inform the public. Too good to be true? Almost. Due to budget cuts the University of Arizona Mineral Museum is only open on Fridays and Saturdays, and to school groups by appointment. If the feared permanent closure of the Flandrau Science Center does take place, what will become of this extraordinary collection?

Curatorial Specialist Sven Bailey and a leaf gold specimen from the Hubert de Monmonier collection, recently acquired by the Mineral Museum. Photograph by Geoffrey Notkin.

117 years ago, UA set out to build a mineral collection that would reflect the epic geologic and mining history of Arizona. They succeeded admirably. Now this great collection is open for only two days a week, and even that may be nothing but a temporary stay of execution. After six years with the museum, the talented Sven Bailey is moving on to a new job unconnected with the university. “Will we miss his expertise terribly,” said Executive Director Alexis Faust. But with the museum and the Science Center facing an uncertain future, who can blame Sven for moving on? Maybe if the Flandrau had a sufficient operating budget he would have stayed.

In a recent letter to Tucson Weekly, former associate director of the Flandrau, Joe Ruggiero, shared this fine sentiment: “For 35 years, through good times and bad, Flandrau provided this community with some measure of wonder, a place where one could come face to face with phenomena and see the beauty of the sky explained in vivid detail.”

Alexis, the current director states: “We have wonderful resources here. There should be a conduit for that information to get to the people of Tucson, the taxpayers.”

The Flandrau Science Center and the UA Mineral Museum are part of that conduit. The mineral museum is an extremely important and unique educational and historical resource. Allowing it to be closed, and therefore lost to the people of Tucson, would be a crime against science.

Tucson is the astronomy capital of the world, I am told by Astronomy Coordinator Michael Terenzoni during a recent visit to the Flandrau Science Center. “People come here from all over the world to do astronomy; to build observatories.”

Michael also informs me that people identify a planetarium as a source of valid information and I, of course, agree with him. “When we have an event in the skies, people come here to find out about it.”

So what happens when they arrive at Tucson’s wonderful Flandrau to find it closed?

In front of the Flandrau Science Center: The large white dome houses the planetarium, and the smaller dome, far right, is the observatory. The U of A Mineral Museum is located in the basement, and the Henry Moore-like sculpture on the lawn cradles a splendid iron meteorite. This internationally recognized institution must be kept alive at all costs. Image courtesy of Flandrau Science Center.

Author Grace Flandrau could informally be described as the Science Center’s mom. A successful novelist, columnist, radio show host, and frequent visitor to Tucson, she died in 1971, and a year later the University of Arizona used a bequest from her estate “to fund a facility that would increase public understanding and appreciation of science.” The official website goes on to say:

Originally known as The Grace H. Flandrau Planetarium, the facility was part of the UA Department of Astronomy. Its location on campus, near the Astronomy Department, Optical Sciences Center, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and historic Steward Observatory, reflects its continuing connections to the research community. The Planetarium was designed by Tucson architectural firm Blanton and Company and opened its door to the public in 1975.

Previous directors have included my friend, the late O. Richard Norton, a highly respected science writer and astronomer, and Richard R. Willey author of the short book The Tucson Meteorites: Their History from Frontier Arizona to the Smithsonian, which chronicles one of Tucson’s most enduring and mysterious legends. What the Flandrau website doesn’t mention is that the planetarium and mineral museum were almost forced to close their doors permanently earlier this year, and manage to maintain minimal opening hours due to the generosity of donors and supporters.

My initial plan was to conduct an interview with Alexis R. Faust, the current Excecutive Director of the Flandrau, then make a short visit to the superb U of A Mineral Museum, housed in the Flandrau’s basement. I thought I might get two interesting columns out of the one visit. I was late for my meeting and waited, briefly and comfortably in the conference room, for Alexis. I was graciously served good coffee, cold spring water and some snacks. My misguided belief that I would be satisfied by a short visit to these two astonishing resources was just that—misguided. I was there for half the day.

“The greatest economic value is the intelligence of people,” Alexis told me within the first couple of minutes. “Knowledge is the currency of the future.” And I was immediately and entirely captivated by her devotion to learning and her observations and predictions—both remarkable and numerous—about the future of education. “The mind is an amazing thing before we beat it to death with rote memorization, prejudice, and fear.”

To my surprise I did not hear any complaints or bitterness about budget cuts and the partial closing of the Science Center. Although the remaining staff have contracts that only run until December, the pervading view seems to be that when cuts need to be made, the money has to come from somewhere. But there is plenty of optimism among the few determined educators who walk through the quiet and nearly empty buildings.

Under the dome: The science fiction-like projector generates astral light for planetarium shows. Image courtesy of Flandrau Science Center.

“We’re not just sitting here,” Alexis elaborated. “We’re writing grants and raising funds so we can bridge this period of time. We are dedicated to finding it, and we are competing against the rest of the country for those funds, so we have to be as good as we can be.” With their their passion for education, their portable planetarium shows, a fine meteorite collection, and “the largest to-scale model of Mars anywhere in the world,” the Flandrau’s protectors are keeping it is as good as it can be, but the public gets to enjoy their best for only two days a week.

Alexis left me with this thought: “A lot of people still come by and knock on the door. They haven’t even heard about us closing. It’s not the university’s fault. I am incredibly grateful that we’re as alive as we are. Education is not getting funded the way it needs to be funded, and education is in the midst of a revolution. We need to keep up with it. That’s why institutions like this are so important.”

So, Alexis isn’t just hoping for better times ahead for the Flandrau, she intends to be part of a global change in not only how we teach, but how we learn. Tucson needs brilliant people like her, and Michael Terrenzoni, right here doing what they do best.

University of Arizona please take note: When times are tough, and we tighten our national belt, some will suffer, but Tucson’s venerable science center, with its international network of colleagues and collaborators, its long history of education and sharing the wonders of astronomy and the natural world, is too important, and too unique a resource to be one of those left to die in a wasteland of economic cutbacks.

Tonight is perhaps the biggest night of the year for astronomy fans, stargazers, and meteorite men, as the annual Perseids meteor shower is expected to peak sometime between now and dawn. A few astronomers have predicted better than average numbers of shooting stars this year, so we are hoping for clear skies.

It started off rather grey and overcast this morning, which reminded me of London though London was never so warm under its blanket of clouds. But the sky is clearing up and there is still a good chance of a spectacle tonight, so don’t give up yet.

Waiting and hoping for clear skies tonight

The greatest number of shooting stars are expected to be between midnight and 4 am, so the dedicated sky watcher will want to stay up late, or get up very early. However, the darkest skies will be before 10:40 pm, when the Moon rises. Any dark area with good visibility will work; the darker the skies, the better your chances of seeing faint meteors, so don’t forget to turn off the kitchen light. For more information, please see last week’s article about the 2009 Perseid meteor shower.

For detailed viewing tips, please see astronomer Michael Terenzoni’s excellent Skywatcher’s Guide. And that reminds me: last week I spent a most enjoyable day at the Flandrau Planetarium, where I had the pleasure of interviewing Michael, the Astronomy Coordinator; Sven Bailey, Curatorial Specialist of the UA Mineral Museum; and the very brilliant Alexis Faust, Executive Director of the Flandrau. Look for a series of articles from me about the future of the Flandrau and the Mineral Museum, along with some intriguing ideas about what might be in store for the next generation of science education, courtesy of Ms. Faust.

Now please go outside and check the skies.

I have always enjoyed chronicling things. When I played music professionally I was the band archivist, forever making tapes of our live performances and preserving a copy of every concert poster.

I have been presented with a unique opportunity to document something a little more unusual—the making of new television adventure series. In the coming months I will be sharing, exclusively with TucsonCitizen.com readers, an unabridged, behind-the-scenes diary about how we created my new show. I hope you find the details, mishaps, and insights to be interesting and entertaining.

Just a few days ago my expedition partner, Steve Arnold, and I received a most important phone call from Debbie Myers, President of Science Channel. A little over a year earlier she had ordered a one-hour pilot from our production company, LMNO of Encino, California. The pilot, Meteorite Men, was a success and so Debbie was calling to share exciting news with us: We were going to series.

The Meteorite Men, Steve Arnold and Geoff Notkin, on location in Kansas. Photograph by Caroline Palmer © Aerolite Meteorites

So, Steve and I will be researching, brainstorming, building and testing new equipment, traveling to strange and possibly dangerous places, engaging in some requisite goofing around and, of course, digging for space rocks.

I am more than a little bewildered by the vast amount of work that we must now accomplish but, as Steve is fond of saying: “If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.”

Come along for the ride. Adventures ahead.

Oh, and while you’re waiting, please check out these exclusive video clips from Meteorite Men, courtesy of Science Channel.

Every now and then something arrives at the Aerolite Meteorites offices that makes us stop what we’re doing and remember how lucky we are to spend our days working with visitors from outer space.

Back in the mid-1950s a farmer in Beltrami County, Minnesota is reported to have accidentally plowed up an unusual iron mass weighing 22.39 kilograms (49 lbs). The exact location remains unknown. In 1968 the mass was identified as an iron meteorite by Glenn Huss of the American Meteorite Laboratory and given the colorful name of Turtle River. Later studies showed that the iron had been artificially reheated, so perhaps a prospector or blacksmith halfheartedly tried to melt it down. We’ll never know; what exactly happened to the unique piece, and where it traveled during the intervening years has been lost to science.

A slab of the Turtle River meteorite, polished and etched to reveal its unique crystalline structure. It was once part of the heart of a planet or asteroid. Photograph by Suzanne Morrison © Aerolite Meteorites

Meteorites are typically named after the nearest town (actually the nearest post office) to their point of discovery. If no town is available, they take their name from the nearest recognizable geographic feature, hence Turtle River.

Every academic meteorite catalog includes the abbreviation TKW in its listing. That number represents the total known weight of all recovered specimens. 22 kg is a very small amount for an iron meteorite and, since no other masses were ever found, the one piece was cut up and distributed among several institutions in the United States, and then sections traveled on to Great Britain, Germany, Russia, Canada, Denmark, and to a couple of prominent private collectors. It seemed everyone wanted a piece of the enigmatic Turtle River meteorite. In fifteen years of studying meteorites I have never seen a piece, until last week when a specimen arrived here, courtesy of one of our colleagues.

What's in a number? In the pre-digital age collectors meticulously hand painted coded collection numbers onto natural history specimens. Photograph by Suzanne Morrison © Aerolite Meteorites

One side has been polished and etched with a weak solution of acid to reveal a lattice-like crystalline structure called the Widmanstatten Pattern. The feature is unique to iron meteorites and never found in earth rocks. One the reverse is a delicate hand painted number “H92.9.” This cryptic code specifically identifies the collection, specimen type and number, all in one: “H” for Huss Collection of Meteorites; “92″ for Turtle River; “9″ for the ninth example of Turtle River cataloged by Glenn Huss. A simple code can tell a lot if you know how to read it.

Iron meteorites were once part of the molten core of a planet or large asteroid, now long gone. Slow cooling in space is believed to have created their remarkable crystalline structure, made up of two different iron-nickel allows: taenite and kamacite. No two patterns are the same—much like snowflakes. Nature does like to hide some of its wonders in the strangest of places.