This is not the latest version of this item. The latest version can be found here.
A Portable Magnetometer for Magnetic Measurements of Meter‐Sized Meteorites
Name
2020GC009266.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.69 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
f338e2b7c01cf640ef35a1714ed32134
Author(s)
Clavé, Elise
Maurel, Clara
Lima, Eduardo A
Shah, Jay
Mansbach, Elias N
Uehara, Minoru
Weiss, Benjamin P
Date Issued
2020
Journal
Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems
Publisher
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Meteorites contain records of past magnetic fields in the form of natural remanent magnetization (NRM). A key property of meteorite magnetization that provides information about its origin is its dependence on spatial scale. In particular, understanding how the mean remanent magnetization varies from the scale of meteorites to the global scale of their parent bodies would aid in the interpretation of spacecraft magnetometry data. However, the vast majority of meteorite samples whose remanent magnetization have been measured have sizes <10 cm due to the limited size range accommodated by laboratory magnetometers. To address this limitation, we developed a portable magnetometer array that enables remanence measurements of meter-size meteorites in a non-magnetically shielded environment. The instrument measures both NRM and induced magnetization using two orthogonal square Helmholtz coil pairs that compensate the vertical and horizontal components of the background magnetic field. An array of four magnetometers mounted on a movable aluminum rail measures the magnetic field at multiple locations around the sample. The instrument is transportable and can be adapted to different sample sizes. After distinguishing the induced component from the remanent component of a sample's total field, the remanence can be estimated from a multipole field inversion combined with nonlinear least squares method. We validated the instrument and data processing on a magnet of known magnetic moment and measured the NRM of a meter-sized iron meteorite.
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
10.1029/2020GC009266
