14053 - Aluminium-rich basalt
Collection:
Click the microscope button to view a thin section for this sample.
Microscope
Click the microscope button to view a thin section for this sample.
Microscope

Fact sheet

14053 - Aluminium-rich basalt

Sample 14053 is a lunar Mare basalt that was found perched on the side of a boulder at Station C2 during the Apollo 14 mission to the Moon and has been dated at 3.92 billion years. This specimen is flat with one side freshly broken and the other side rounded and pitted by microcraters. Breccia material was found attached to the flat side, indicating that this basalt was probably a clast in the larger boulder (breccia).

The thin section illustrates the ophitic basalt texture with large, zoned, pyroxene grains surrounding laths of plagioclase. The rock is relatively coarse-grained and some researchers have described it as a medium-grained microgabbro. The rock has strongly-zoned pyroxene grains up to 5 millimetres in length enclosing smaller subhedral laths of plagioclase. A small amount of olivine (both as sub-rounded phenocrysts and fayalite) is located in the mesostasis, which also contains chrome-spinel, ilmenite, cristobalite, troilite, phosphates, K-feldspar and K-Ba-rich residual glass.

Additional images
  •  Sample 14053 came from this boulder at Station C2
About this collection

Sample details

Type
igneous
Category
mare basalt
Rock-forming mineral
pyroxene
olivine
Accessory minerals
chrome-spinel
ilmenite
cristobalite
troilite
phosphate
k-feldspar
Category guide  
Category Guide
Title
Refers to any word or phrase that appears in the individual rock names. Names are generally descriptive; they allow users to search for broad terms like ‘granite’ as well as more specific names such as ‘breccia’. However, the adjacent descriptions of the specimens captures a wider range of general words and phrases and is a more powerful search tool.
Description
Refers to any word or phrase that appears anywhere in the descriptions of the specimens
Accessory minerals
Minerals that occur in very low abundance in a rock. They are usually not visible with the naked eye and contribute perhapssver, they often dominate the rare elements such as platinum group metals.
Rock-forming minerals
Minerals that make up the bulk of all rock samples and are also the ones used in rock classi?cation.
Timescale
Selecting one or more period, for example 'Jurassic'.
Theme
A term used to group together related samples that are not already gathered into a single Collection. For instance, there is a ‘SW England granites’ theme that includes such rock types as granite, hydrothermal breccia, skarn and vein samples.
Category
A general term used to label a rock sample. It is a useful way of grouping similar samples throughout a collection. Category names are often, but not exclusively, common rock names (e.g. granite, basalt, dolerite, gabbro, greisen, skarn, gneiss, amphibolite, limestone, sandstone).
Owner
The owner of the sample that appears in the collection. For example, NASA owns all the samples that appear in the Moon Rocks collection
We would like to thank the following for the use of this sample: