Logged to 5484 feet, microscopic views of secondary minerals

Despite the lack of regular blog updates, we have been steadily logging the deepest core of the project over the last couple weeks.  At the end of today, we have logged to a depth of 5484 ft - only 302 ft to go!  The highly altered rocks contain a host of exotic zeolite minerals, see below for a couple pictures taken with our new microscope camera:

 

Both photos were taken at 40X magnification, and are probably different minerals of the zeolite family commonly formed by weathering of Hawaii basalts.  The upper photo shows a worm-shaped pattern of crystal growth that is unlike anything we've seen before, but there is very little of that material that is easy to extract.  We have gathered enough of the fibrous material in the lower photo that we can analyze in the near future via X-Ray Diffraction (XRD).  

Upcoming work to be done soon: Finishing the logging and editing all the logs for consistency, compiling a graphical log showing the stratigraphy of the hole, and sampling throughout the hole for preliminary analyses that will spur research proposal efforts.