Microscopic meteorites: Art, science and stories from space infocus #79 September 2025

Microscopic meteorites is an art exhibition recently created by Dr Luke Norman and myself, to show the public the wonders of meteorites at the microscale, as well as (hopefully) educating them about space and space rocks at the same time.

DOI: 10.22443/rms.inf.1.297

The rest of this article needs to be prefaced with a warning: I am not a planetary scientist. I’m an imaging scientist by trade, a geologist by training, and a space lover by nature.

Until this project I’ve had limited experience working with meteorites. One week in my master’s year analytical techniques module (coincidentally the module that introduced me to the world of Scanning Electron Microscopy) and mounting them into resin blocks for other colleagues to analyse these extra-terrestrial marvels.

However, when a colleague - Luke Norman, our Knowledge Exchange Fellow and outreach wizard - announced he’d bought a few meteorites and secured funding to produce an art exhibition as part a collection of outreach events dubbed ‘Summer of Space’, and was asking for someone to analyse and image these meteorites, the answer had to be yes.

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