Scanning Electron Microscopy of Chondritic Meteorites: Evidence for Condensation and Aggregation Processes During the Birth of the Solar System

Carbonaceous chondrite meteorites preserve evidence of how the solar system formed and evolved through its earliest stages. Extracting these clues from small and very fine grained (a few tens of μm and smaller in many cases) meteorite components has required extensive use of micro beam techniques-scanning electron microscopy (SEM), electron and ion microprobe. Correlated studies have allowed textural, major and trace element and isotopic data to be gathered on the same precious microsamples. The best method for examining textures in these meteorites is scanning electron microscopy of flat polished sections using compositional back-scattered electron imaging