Meteoritics & Planetary Science—Special Issue

The December 2012 Meteoritics & Planetary Science (volume 47, no. 12) is a special issue with nearly 400 pages featuring work in Cosmochemistry presented at the Workshop on Formation of the First Solids in the Solar System, which was held on the island of Kaua‘i, November 7–9, 2011. This workshop was dedicated to Klaus Keil (University of Hawai‘i) to honor his distinguished career in meteoritics and cosmochemistry. Dr. Keil pioneered the use of the electron microprobe to determine the chemical composition of minerals in meteorites. He is one of the co-inventors of the energy-dispersive x-ray spectrometer used on electron microprobes and microscopes to analyze small samples. Dr. Keil's wide-ranging research covers all types of meteorites and Apollo lunar samples. [For more see the Workshop website and the PSRD article Festival on the Formation of the First Solids in the Solar System.]

Though a subscription is needed to access the articles online, the M&PS Table of Contents and abstracts are available to everyone. The papers range in topic from Astronomical observations and modeling of circumstellar disks and the early Solar System to Chronology of the first solids in the Solar System to Oxygen isotopes in the early Solar System and refractory inclusions to Origin of chondrules and chondrites.

Meteoritics & Planetary Science is an international monthly journal published by John Wiley & Sons on behalf of the Meteoritical Society, which is a non-profit scholarly organization founded in 1933 to promote the study of extraterrestrial materials, including meteorites and space mission returned samples, and their history. The membership of the society boasts 950 scientists and amateur enthusiasts from over 33 countries who are interested in a wide range of planetary science. Members' interests include meteorites, cosmic dust, asteroids and comets, natural satellites, planets, impacts, and the origins of the Solar System. For more information, visit www.meteoriticalsociety.org.

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Written by Linda M. V. Martel, Hawai‘i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, for PSRD.