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Micrometeorite Trap

JamesF

By JamesF
in DIY Astronomer

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JamesF

JamesF

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My ten year old son deserves most of the credit for this as he did all the measuring, drillng and sawing.  And took most of the photos too.  I just did the project management :D

These are pictures of the micrometeorite trap we've built today.  Unfortunately it hasn't had the effect of stopping it raining :)

We started with a 25 litre dairy hypochlorate drum and cut out the spout so a 68mm downpipe would fit in:

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Next up was a hole in the side to allow water to escape back into the drain:

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We fitted a 90 degree elbow through the hole and sealed it in place with silicon sealant:

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Then it was just a case of cutting a few more lengths of pipe and fitting them together with some 135 degree elbows to take the water from the existing downpipe and feed it into the barrel:

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The bottom ends of both pipes are cut at an angle to avoid having leaves and other detritus blocking the pipe at the bottom.  The feed pipe does go all the way to the bottom, so anything heavy has a chance to settle out rather than being carried straight out of the side.

And here it is in situ.  I've placed a very strong neodymium magnet in a zip-lock back at the bottom of the barrel to collect anything metallic that washes around the bottom.

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I went out to check it earlier and it does appear to be functioning nicely.

This particular gutter collects run-off from somewhere around 70 square metres of roof.  I'll give it a couple of weeks and lift the magnet out to see how it's doing, but if it works well we might leave it in place all the time.

James

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JamesF

JamesF

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great idea! would another hole neat the top with a flap make retrieval of the magnet easier?

In retrospect that might make retrieving the magnet easier without having to move all the pipework, yes.  I may well end up with another as my daughter is also keen to have one, in which case improvements might well be implemented.  I think they're both rather taken with the idea of finding a few bits that they can take into school to "show off".  Which I can understand, really.  I guess most of us think of the dinosaurs as incomprehensibly ancient and we only know them from fossils that aren't even actually bits of dinosaur.  To be able to hold something in your hand that is so old that even the dinosaurs are insignificant is really quite something.

James

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JamesF

JamesF

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Sounds like a fun project. I have some stupidly strong Faraday Isolator magnets which I could just leave in my gutters collecting for a few months.

Worth a try, certainly.  Putting them in zip-lock bags is a good plan though.  Makes it far easier to get the bits off for checking through afterwards.

James

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Paul M

Paul M

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Going back to my school days, a classmate who I got interested in astronomy put a strong magnet in the gutter outside his bedroom and brought it to school after some time to show me.

It did have some grains attached to it but I never took the idea of them being metoritic in origin seriously. I suggested they were born of the cast iron gutter or slate nail erosion.

Shows what I know :D

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JamesF

JamesF

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Wow, this would make a great project for the family.

I assume you will use a microscope to study what you collect?

Exactly so.  I'm expecting that we'll get a bit of a mixture of stuff on the magnet, but as the guttering is all plastic and the rain is running off a tile roof the local contamination shouldn't be too bad.  It will hopefully be possibly to sort the obvious rubbish from the potentially meteoritic material under the microscope.

My understanding is that if you have an iron foundry in the vicinity there can be bits of metal from the foundry floating about in the atmosphere that look very similar to a piece of meteorite, but I'm hopeful that shouldn't be too much of an issue for us as we're surrounded by farmland.  Probably the greatest source of contamination will be birds perching on the roof :)

James

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Beulah

Beulah

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Excellent.

This is definitely a project I will do - I did wonder whether to drain off the water butt to see what lies at the bottom....I already have a runoff from the drainpipe so I might disconnect that from the water butt and feet it into the trap. Probably better to adapt the guttering drain so that all of the runoff goes through for a better chance of sample collection.

I'll see if I can pick up a drum from work this week.  :)

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leeseafish

leeseafish

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Excellent idea and great to have kids with this level of interest.  You have given me an idea of where to "mine" micrometorites - the water butts on my allotement garden.  They have been collecting rainwater off greenhouse roofs for years and have never been cleaned.  I shall fish in them at the weekend with a magnet and let you know the results.

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JamesF

JamesF

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Excellent idea and great to have kids with this level of interest.  You have given me an idea of where to "mine" micrometorites - the water butts on my allotement garden.  They have been collecting rainwater off greenhouse roofs for years and have never been cleaned.  I shall fish in them at the weekend with a magnet and let you know the results.

Excellent :)  We had a few grains after a week that we've not yet looked at with the microscope and we're going to leave it for a good month or so now.

James

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Gina

Gina

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Very intriguing :)  Might have a go myself, we have plastic gutters and tiled roof on our bungalow so no source of contamination from those sources, no iron foundaries or anything like that in the area - only fields and a few houses.  I too have a few super magnets.  I use one in it's plastic box to pick up tiny screws from the carpet (DSLRs have lots of very tiny steel screws).

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JamesF

JamesF

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Very intriguing :)  Might have a go myself, we have plastic gutters and tiled roof on our bungalow so no source of contamination from those sources, no iron foundaries or anything like that in the area - only fields and a few houses.  I too have a few super magnets.  I use one in it's plastic box to pick up tiny screws from the carpet (DSLRs have lots of very tiny steel screws).

Well, there's got to be some way to turn all this rain into some kind of benefit :)

James

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John

John

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Hi John might need to invest in a microscope soon a could see this be in expensive would like to see some results first

Pat

Goodness knows how you would know if a micro specimen was of meteoric origin amongst all that terrestrial dust without analysis by a specialised laboratory such as that at the Natural History Museum.

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Gina

Gina

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For those interested in this, it's worth giving this short article a read:

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/earthscienceandengineering/research/iarc/theformationofsolarsystems/micrometeorites

A prevalent misconception about micrometeorites is that they can be collected from rain water. Although micrometeorites are present in rain they are hidden amongst billions of terrestrial particles.

Oh dear :(

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John

John

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Hmmm.  That's going to be a tough call.  NASA/JPL say you can.  Imperial College say you can't.  Who do you choose to believe in that situation?

James

If you get enough material, there will be some meteoric stuff in there, somewhere. The question is , I think, can you identify which particles are the extraterrestrials ?.

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