• Proceedings of the Mineralogical Society of Korea Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.66-66
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• 2003

King George island, Antarctica, is mostly covered by ice sheet and glaciers, but the land area is focally exposed for several thousand years after deglaciation. For a mineralogical study of chemical weathering in the polar environment, glacial debris was sampled at the well-developed patterned ground which was formed by long periglaclal process. As fresh equivalents, recently exposed tills were sampled at the base of ice cliff of outlet glaciers and at the melting margin of ice cap together with fresh bedrock samples. Fresh tills are mostly composed of quartz, plagioclase, chlorite, and illite, but those derived from hydrothermal alteration zone contain smectite and illite-smectite. In bedrocks, chlorite was the major clay minerals in most samples with minor illite near hydrothermal alteration zone and interstratified chlorite-smectite in some samples. Smectite closely associated with eolian volcanic glass was assigned to alteration in their source region. Blocks with rough surface due to chemical disintegration showed weathering rinds of several millimeter thick. Comparision between inner fresh and outer altered zones did not show notable change in clay mineralogy except dissolution of calcite and some plagioclase. Most significant weathering was observed in the biotite flakes, eolian volcanic glass, sulfides, and carbonates in the debris. Biotite flakes derived from granodiorite were altered to hydrobiotite and vermiculite of yellow brown color. Minor epitactic kaolinite and gibbsite were formed in the cleaved flakes of weathered biotite. Pyrite was replaced by iron oxides. Calcite was congruently dissolved. Volcanic glass of basaltic andesite composition showed alteration rim of several micrometer thick or completely dissolved leaving mesh of plagioclase laths. In the alteration rim, Si, Na, Mg, and Ca were depleted, whereas Al, Ti, and Fe were relatively enriched. Mineralization of lichen and moss debris is of much interest. They are rich of A3 and Si roughly in the ratio of 2:1 to 3:1 typical of allophane. In some case, Fe and Ti are enriched in addition to Al and Si. Transmission electron microscopy of the samples rich of volcanic glass showed abundant amorphous aluminosilicates, which are interpreted as allophane. Chemical weathering in the King George Island is dominated by the leaching of primary phyllosilicates, carbonates, eolian volcanic glass, and minor sulfides. Authigenesls of clay minerals is less active. Absence of a positive evidence of significant authigenic smectite formation suggests that its contribution to the clay mineralogy of marine sediments are doubtful even near the maritime Antarctica undergoing a more rapid and intenser chemical weathering under more humid and milder climate.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.140.2-140.2
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• 2012

The silicate carbon star IRAS 09425-6040 shows very conspicuous crystalline silicate dust features and excessive emission at far infrared. To investigate properties of dusty envelopes around the object, we use radiative transfer models for axisymmetric and sphericallly symmetric dust distributions. We perform model calculations for various possible combinations of dust shells and disks with various dust species. We compare the model results with the observed spectral energy distributions (SEDs) including the IRAS, ISO, AKARI, MSX and 2MASS data. We find that a model with multiple disks of amorphous and crystalline silicate and multiple spherical shells of carbon dust can reproduce the observed SED fairly well. This supports the scenario for the origin of silicate carbon stars that oxygen-rich material was shed by mass loss when the primary star was an M giant and the O-rich material is stored in a circumbinary disk. Highly (about 75 %) crystallized forsterite dust in the disk can reproduce the conspicuous crystalline features of the ISO observational data. This object looks to have a detached silicate and H2O ice shell with a much higher mass-loss rate. It could be a remnant of the chemical transition phase. The last phase of stellar winds of O-rich materials looks to be a superwind.