Magnetometer Surveys: Attempts and Issues in Locating a 1948 Private Water Well on the Shore of Lac Sault Dore, Price County, Wisconsin

Two different magnetometer surveys in northern Wisconsin during the summers of 1997 and 2010, using two different Geometrics magnetometers, a proton precession G-816 unit and a cesium vapor G-858 unit, in an attempt to locate a surface-target position of, and depth to, an abandoned 1948 private water well, successfully targeted the suspect surface position and the depth to the well head spike. Both surveys detected 400-gamma anomalies and estimated the depth to the spike at 2 meters. A land owner, private family photograph taken in 1951, was used to compare the anomaly’s position to the actual surface position of the well. Two, one meter deep pits were hand dug in 2004, in an attempt to excavate, remove and replace the well spike; however, the attempt was not successful due to large trees, roots, and available equipment. For aesthetic reasons, the land owners were reluctant to cut the trees down at that time in order to continue excavation. After the 2010, magnetometer survey, a second excavation attempt was not made, and no future excavation attempts are planned at this time

An Applied Geophysical Detection and Subsequent Mitigation of an Abandoned Well Casing Penetrating the Permian Hutchinson Salt at an Undisclosed Kansas Salt Mine

A surface field survey, using a cesium magnetometer, successfully targeted the spatial location of an abandoned buried well casing. Surface excavation exposed the top of the well casing, but attempts to drill out the casing from the surface failed due to the difficulty of keeping the drill bit on-line with the casing. The casing was successfully sealed off by grouting through the ceiling and floor from within the mine

First optical images of circumstellar dust surrounding the debris disk candidate HD 32297

Near-infrared imaging with the Hubble Space Telescope recently revealed a circumstellar dust disk around the A star HD 32297. Dust scattered light is detected as far as 400 AU radius and the linear morphology is consistent with a disk ~10 degrees away from an edge-on orientation. Here we present the first optical images that show the dust scattered light morphology from 560 to 1680 AU radius. The position angle of the putative disk midplane diverges by 31 degrees and the color of dust scattering is most likely blue. We associate HD 32297 with a wall of interstellar gas and the enigmatic region south of the Taurus molecular cloud. We propose that the extreme asymmetries and blue disk color originate from a collision with a clump of interstellar material as HD 32297 moves southward, and discuss evidence consistent with an age of 30 Myr or younger.Comment: 5 pages; Accepted for publication in ApJ Letter