Backscattered electron (BSE) maps of Apollo 15 mare basalt thin sections

Backscattered electron (BSE) maps of 52 Apollo 15 mare basalt thin sections analysed for the PhD thesis 'Crystal storage and transfer in lunar magmatic systems', awarded to S.K. Bell by the University of Manchester, November 2021. The thesis can be accessed in full at: https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/crystal-storage-and-transfer-in-lunar-magmatic-systems

Thin sections were prepared by NASA JSC and were carbon coated at the University of Manchester prior to analysis. The FEI QUANTA 650 field emission gun (FEG) scanning electron microscope (SEM) at the University of Manchester was used to collect BSE maps of each thin section. The BSE maps were collected using an accelerating voltage of 15 kV and a dwell time of 10 μs on a single frame. Each map consists of 1 mm tiles mapped at a resolution of 1024 x 884, with a resulting scale of 0.98 microns per pixel.

Accompanying optical microscope images can be found at: Bell, Samantha (2021), “Thesis Data: Crystal storage and transfer in lunar magmatic systems”, The University of Manchester, V1, doi: 10.17632/r4xjvv64rm.1

Several of the BSE maps presented here, were used in the following publications:

Bell, S.K., Joy, K.H., Pernet-Fisher, J.F. and Hartley, M.E., 2020. QEMSCAN as a method of semi-automated crystal size distribution analysis: insights from Apollo 15 mare basalts. Journal of Petrology, 61(4), p.egaa047. https://doi.org/10.1093/petrology/egaa047

Bell, S.K., Joy, K.H., Pernet‐Fisher, J.F. and Hartley, M.E., 2023. Investigating the crystallization history of Apollo 15 mare basalts using quantitative textural analysis. Meteoritics & Planetary Science, 58(7), pp.955-977. https://doi.org/10.1111/maps.14032

Bell, S.K., Morgan, D.J., Joy, K.H., Pernet-Fisher, J.F. and Hartley, M.E., 2023. Determining the thermal histories of Apollo 15 mare basalts using diffusion modelling in olivine. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 357, pp.77-91. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gca.2023.08.009