Feathery Basalt

"feathery" groundmass texture in Apollo 17 Basalt 71157,8
~1mm wide cross-polarized image of a portion of the groundmass in Apollo 17 high-Ti basalt 71157 (thin section ,8). The "feathery" texture results from the intergrowth of pyroxene (brown), plagioclase (white/gray/black), ilmenite (black), and some glass (black). The other major phase is olivine, which is present on the image borders and forms the plus-shaped cluster at right middle. There are several early literature (pre-1980s) references to feathery intergrowths, but the associated images have degraded in quality (many articles appear to be scans of photocopies).

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