Magnetic study of magnetite in the Tagish Lake meteorite

Abstract

The saturation magnetization, saturation remanent magnetization, the coercive, and remanent coercive force were determined at room and liquid nitrogen temperatures for three pieces of the Tagish Lake meteorite. The results are compared to similar data for four other chondrites (Allende, Murray, Orgueil, and Murchison). The data suggests that the Tagish Lake meteorite is magnetically homogeneous, and is not as magnetically hard as the comparison chondrites. The magnetization measurements indicate that it contains about 10-11% multi-domain magnetite. Magnetic susceptibility measurements on all the samples from 77 K to room temperature showed a Verwey transition for all the samples which contain a significant amount of multi-domain magnetite. The coercive force data further indicate that the magnetite in Tagish Lake is multi-domain and that the grain size is small and approximately 4-9 μm.