Helping Birkbeck’s meteorite hunters analyse bigger datasets faster and with less manual work

Dr Andrew Beard and his research team from Birkbeck University are on the hunt for evidence of meteorite impacts near the Isle of Skye. Covering large areas, the team needs to accurately identify a range of phases like nickel phosphide, titanium vanadium nitride and osbornite. Manually analysing individual thin samples can take hours of work. Now, AZtecLive Large Area Mapping (LAM), from Oxford Instruments, is helping them work faster and with greater accuracy than ever before.

Our automation software module is helping the team cover more ground, without sacrificing the reproducibility, accuracy and consistency they expect from our instruments. The new mapping facility means that it can stitch together thin sections into larger mosaics that can be analysed at the same time. Analysing larger datasets in a shorter period is helping the team to quickly see exactly which phases are present and identify areas of interest. “We can leave it running overnight and come back in the morning to the final Layered image, as well as backscattered images and X-ray maps of every single element too,” says Dr Andrew Beard. “This would have taken absolutely ages before and involved three separate analytical methods.”