Welcome to the Science Art Gallery
The idea was born on Expedition 393 when one of the scientists, Chiara Amadori, onboard realized how pretty the minerals in thin sections and the structures in the X-rays looked. After showing outreach officer, Tessa Peixoto, their observations were turned the galley into a gallery! Crew members were invited to share what they saw in the Thin Sections and X-rays. When one person saw a house on a lake the other saw a planet among stars.
Thin sections are thinly sliced hard rock, as thin as your hair, and are used for identifying grain size, and type of minerals in the rock. By exposing the slide of thinly sliced rock to different light, the colors and opaqueness of the minerals changes.
X-rays are exactly what you might think of when you think of getting a broken bone or your lungs x-rayed at the doctor. We X Ray image the whole round and section half cores to understand their internal structures. For instance, trace fossils of creatures that left passages in the seafloor.
Smear slides are toothpick amounts of sediment that have been spread across a microscope glass slide. It is used to study what types of minerals are in the sediment and to check if what we see without the microscope is actually what is in the sediment sample. We can see fossils, clays, and evidence of volcanic events.
There is so much more that can be shared like fluorescent microscopy, macroscopic images, etc…
The Science Art Gallery is set up with the aim to interact with more than just crew members this time and with more material from different expeditions. Please peruse the images of sediment and rocks from JR expeditions, and, if you have the time, tell us what you see in the comments!
Thin Section 1
Thin Section 1
Under cross polarized light, there is fine grained basalt with plagioclase (white) clinopyroxene (yellowish) and oxides (red/black). Plus some secondary chlorite (green).
Thin Section 2
Thin Section 2
Under cross polarization, there are plagioclase (white/gray), oxides (red) and small pyroxenes (colorful minerals).
Thin Section 3
Thin Section 3
This thin section is plagioclase and quartz grains within a granite with gypsum plate inserted. Note the similar colors in the fine grain portions of the thin section.
Xray Image 1
X ray image 1
The lightness of the color indicates level of density and the white line through the grey means the line is filled with less dense material or is empty compared to the grey of the sediment around it.
Xray Image 2
X ray Image 2
The lightness of the color indicates level of density and this Xray image shows good example of layering among different density sediment.