Exogeology ROCKS!

I love to travel! I’ve been to many different countries, and nearly every U.S. state. I love going to different places and seeing the world! Some of my favorite vacations were combined with fieldwork, often unintentionally. An example of this is when I went to White Sands, New Mexico. I went there to study the dunes, and I went sledding on the sand. Alamogordo, the closest town to where White Sands is located, is a town devoted to astronomy! This is where the New Mexico Museum of Space History is located (and I highly recommend it for all ages). I also went to the solar observatory nearby in Sunspot, NM. You can’t tell from their websites just how different the observatories I’ve been to are, but they really are distinct!

Here are photographs I took of the gypsum dunes at White Sands:

Another one of my favorite trips was to the Arkansas Crater of Diamonds. It’s pretty much what it sounds like: a crater with diamonds in Arkansas. The Crater of Diamonds is the only place in the world open to the public to find diamonds. It’s not an impact crater, it’s a diatreme. That’s  volcanic crater formed by an explosion from a buildup of gas. The explosion helped to bring diamonds to the surface. I identified the rocks in the crater as lamproite, and I found some beautiful butterscotch colored jasper. I also found some quartz fragments, and volcanic tuff. I expect the moon looks a bit similar to the crater, with the gray volcanic rocks and tuff. I didn’t find any diamonds, unfortunately. The area around the crater was a very pretty and humid forest environment though, so only the crater itself is at all like something found somewhere other than Earth.

Here are a couple of photographs from when I went rock collecting there:

I went to Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument just recently. I needed to see a volcano in order to compare and contrast with Io and Martian volcanoes like Olympus Mons. Most of my work is with Mars, but I’ve been doing research for some probes like Cassini and New Horizons, too. Some of the things I found showed me that Sunset Crater is not like Olympus Mons, since Sunset Crater is a cinder cone and Olympus Mons is a shield volcano. I climbed to the top of Lenox Crater, a cinder cone right next to Sunset Crater (which you’re not allowed to climb). It was a bit tricky, especially since rocks kept getting in my shoes. It seemed a bit strange to me that there are volcanoes in Arizona, but I figured out the answer. It’s a hot spot! There are no tectonic boundaries in AZ, but mantle plumes can happen anywhere. That’s something I study with other planets, too: I find something which seems strange and I figure out what caused it. It’s like a mystery! Exogeology ROCKS!

Here are a couple of photographs I took at Sunset Crater:

I just plain like traveling, and pretty much anywhere I go I can find something that ROCKS! I take little trips around the state, like to Sunset Crater, all the time. I enjoy visiting (and using) observatories, seeing geologic formations, and going to places that are completely non-exogeology related. Be sure to look at the Telescopes and Observatories page written by Zoë to see some of the telescopes I’ve used. I want to see all the most varied and interesting places I can! But I always go back to Arizona. I love it here. Besides, what better place could there be for doing what I love? Geology and astronomy both seem to lead me all over the globe, but the best place is back home in Arizona. It works out well for me!

Yes, on Earth! Even though I mainly study other planets, Earth is a great place to see all sorts of geologic formations! Let me tell you about some great things to see on Earth that I’ve seen on the planets and moons.

• Craters

Wait, craters on Earth? I thought there were only craters on the Moon! No, actually there can be craters on just about anything (as long as it has a solid surface; there aren’t craters on jovian planets). Earth has relatively few though, because smaller meteors burn up in our thick atmosphere. But some of the few meteor craters there are on Earth can be quite something to see! It’s almost like you’re on the moon! Barringer Crater in Arizona is the best example. Most craters on Earth are a bit less dramatic though, after being eroded for thousands of years. It gives you a great sense of what you’re dealing with to go and see a real crater.

• Canyons

Canyons are usually carved out by rivers, so why would they be in a list of exogeology related formations? After all, Earth is the only planet with such a large amount of water. Well, I’ve added them for a couple reasons. The first is that there are some formations that can best be described as canyons, even though they’re not made in the same way as the canyons we’re used to seeing. Take Mars’ Valles Marineris. It’s the largest canyon in the Solar System, but it’s a rift valley (a type of fault). On the other hand, there are channels on Mars that might have been made by the flow of water, like dried up riverbeds. I’ll talk about that more in a later post.

• Ice

Ice fields are the only formation on this list I have yet to see. I’m actually going to be flying to Iceland for a few days to study glaciers. Because of this, posts over the next few days will be automated while I’m gone. Ice has been found all over: in comets and asteroids, on moons (Europa in particular), and on Mars. The gas giants are theorized to have icy cores. But not all this ice is actually frozen water. Europa might have water ice, but we don’t know for sure. Comets have water ice though. Water is so important on Earth that I think everything with water is exciting! Water is necessary for life, and that’s something I’d be thrilled to find. Could you imagine? I’m a huge science fiction fan, and that inspires me to think about big new scientific discoveries like life or undiscovered planets all the time. I’m getting off topic. Let’s get back to those awesome rocks!

• Sand Dunes

Sand dunes can be found wherever there is sand, wind, and a dry climate. I went to the White Sands National Monument recently, and it was beautiful! As soon as you drove into the park there were sand dunes as far as you could see. The field of dunes was comparable to some of the dunes on Mars. An even better comparison is Utah’s Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. The reddish sand makes it feel as if you’re really on Mars. Dusty parts of deserts are also good places to look for dust devils, a common sight on the red planet.

• Minerals and Rocks

Yes, I know, I was supposed to tell you about formations and not minerals. But minerals are important too! You need to look at the big things and the little things. There are a whole bunch of rocks and minerals that occur on Earth and also in space. One of my favorites is hematite. That’s an iron based mineral common on Mars. It comes in a few different forms. One form of hematite is red and rocky, and another is silvery gray and metallic. Iron in rocks is what makes Mars red! Moon rocks are pretty cool too; a rock from a lunar mare is made of the same thing as lava rocks on Earth! That ROCKS!

• Volcanoes

Volcanoes have been found on Mars, Venus, Mercury, and Io. And on Titan there are cryovolcanoes! There are active and inactive volcanoes all over Earth that are fascinating to see in person. I try to go to as many volcano sites as I can during field research.

• Plate Tectonics

Plate tectonics is the process that makes the continents move. They spread apart like at the mid Atlantic ridge, and move under each other (called subduction) in places like Japan and the Aleutian islands of Alaska. The Earth’s surface is changing! And what’s more, there used to be plate tectonics on ancient Mars, and there still are on Titan!

• Strata

Strata is just another term for rock layers. There are strata everywhere! That’s because rock layers can form all sorts of ways, like an ocean depositing sand on a beach or volcanoes erupting new lava flows. Strata can show a lot about that geographical area’s past. One time I looked at the strata in the Grand Canyon to figure out what order things happened in. I could easily see that the layers on the bottom formed first, then were tilted, and then that surface was eroded flat. More layers formed, and finally the Colorado River eroded the rocks away to create the Grand Canyon! How cool is it that you can tell what was happening for millions of years just by looking at rocks? I say that ROCKS! I do the exact same sort of thing when I look at strata from anywhere.

Can you believe so many of the same things happen on Earth that happen on other planets? I think it’s amazing. Exogeology ROCKS!