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The Virtual Microscope is an Open University project involving members of the Faculty of Science and the Knowledge Media Institute.
I have been involved with my colleagues at the Open University and the Natural History Museums in London and Vienna in developing the "Extraterrestrial" strand of this project.
We have recieved funding from the EUROPLANET project funded by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme to initiate a programme digitising thin sections of extraterrestrial samples covering most of the main meteorite classes and some returned Moon rocks.
Since meteorites and returned Moon rocks are precious samples and are not universally accessible to all, our aim is to serve the community by providing a virtual microscope view of a range of extraterrestrial rock samples.
We have also recently recieved additional funding from the Natural History Museum, London to digitise a unique collection of British meteorites.
This is work in progress and your feedback for making further improvements will be greatly appreciated. Please send any comments to M.Anand@open.ac.uk
The Virtual Microscope provides plane-polarized-light (PPL) and cross-polarized-light (XPL) views of meteorite thin sections at various magnifications. An additional feature of the virtual microscope is the possibility to rotate a thin section whilst viewing it in PPL and XPL simultaneously - something which is not possible with a conventional microscope!
The thin sections used in this project are part of my research work and I am thankful to the Meteorite Working Group (MWG), The Natural History Museum, London, and NASA CAPTEM for providing many of the samples.
