¹S. V. S. Murty, ¹S. Ghosh, ¹Dwijesh Ray
Meteoritics & Planetary Science (in Press) Link to Article [https://doi.org/10.1111/maps.13195]
¹Planetary Sciences Division, Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India, Vastrapur, Ahmedabad, India
Published by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons

Noble gases and nitrogen were measured in two adjacent samples each from the Raghunathpura (IIAB) and the Nyaung (IIIAB) iron meteorite falls. Light noble gases in both the meteorites were of pure cosmogenic origin. Using (3He/4He)c ratios and the production systematic of Ammon et al. (2009), we estimated the sample depth and meteoroid size for Nyaung (~8 cm depth in a ~15 cm radius object) and Raghunathpura (~12–14 cm depth in a ~25 cm object). We derived cosmic ray exposure ages of 1710 ± 256 Ma (for Nyaung, the highest reported so far for the IIIAB group) and 224 ± 34 Ma (for Raghunathpura). Variable amounts of trapped Kr and Xe were found in both meteorites. The phase Q‐like elemental ratio (84Kr/132Xe) suggests that the trapped component is of indigenous origin, and most likely hosted in the heterogeneously distributed micro‐inclusions of troilite/schreibersite. Trapped phase Q component is being reported for the first time, for a IIAB iron meteorite. Both meteorites showed light isotopic composition for nitrogen, and need at least two N components to explain the observed N isotopic systematic. Variable amounts of trapped noble gases and the presence of more than one N component suggest that the magmatic process that formed the parent body of these meteorites either could not completely homogenize or completely degas all the phases.

^1,2Queenie H.S. Chan et al. (>10)
Meteoritics & Planetary Science (in Press) Link to Article [https://doi.org/10.1111/maps.13193]
¹ARES, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, USA
²Department of Physical Sciences, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, UK
Published by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons

We present in this study the effects of short‐term heating on organics in the Tagish Lake meteorite and how the difference in the heating conditions can modify the organic matter (OM) in a way that complicates the interpretation of a parent body’s heating extent with common cosmothermometers. The kinetics of short‐term heating and its influence on the organic structure are not well understood, and any study of OM is further complicated by the complex alteration processes of the thermally metamorphosed carbonaceous chondrites—potential analogues of the target asteroid Ryugu of the Hayabusa2 mission—which had experienced posthydration, short‐duration local heating. In an attempt to understand the effects of short‐term heating on chondritic OM, we investigated the change in the OM contents of the experimentally heated Tagish Lake meteorite samples using Raman spectroscopy, scanning transmission X‐ray microscopy utilizing X‐ray absorption near edge structure spectroscopy, and ultraperformance liquid chromatography fluorescence detection and quadrupole time of flight hybrid mass spectrometry. Our experiment suggests that graphitization of OM did not take place despite the samples being heated to 900 °C for 96 h, as the OM maturity trend was influenced by the heating conditions, kinetics, and the nature of the OM precursor, such as the presence of abundant oxygenated moieties. Although both the intensity of the 1s−σ* exciton cannot be used to accurately interpret the peak metamorphic temperature of the experimentally heated Tagish Lake sample, the Raman graphite band widths of the heated products significantly differ from that of chondritic OM modified by long‐term internal heating.