Rabt Sbayta 007

NEIL BUCKLAND  

RABT SBAYTA 007  

signed by the artist  

thin-section print on archival paper  

48 x 36 inches (121.92 × 91.44 cm)  

Executed in 2026.

This print is made to order by Neil Buckland from a thin-section microphotograph of the Rabt Sbayta 007 lunar meteorite (see Lot 21). Working from a single thin section cut to approximately 30 microns, Buckland uses a custom-built micro-panoramic imaging microscope of his own design to capture hundreds of individual photographs, assembling them into a seamless photomosaic. At this thickness, transmitted light passes through the mineral grains of the lunar highland breccia, illuminating the mosaic of fragments cemented together over 4 billion years of bombardment on the Moon's surface: shattered feldspar, recrystallized mineral clasts, glass-welded matrix. At this scale, the geological history of the early Solar System becomes visible as color, geometry, and light. Each print is produced by the artist in archival inks on a 12-color pigment-based fine art printer.

This thin section image captured in partially cross-polarized transmitted light reveals an array of broken angular crystals of plagioclase, olivine and pyroxene set in a fine grained interstitial matrix of the same minerals plus opaque oxides and sulfide.

Buckland's Cosmic Microscapes bridge art and science and have been featured in galleries and museums around the country, international scientific conferences, and published in WIRED magazine, The Meteorite Times, and peer reviewed scientific papers.