A recent meteorite fall

[John]

As a complimentary pastime to Astronomy, I have been gradually bulding up a small collection of meteorite specimens. I've recently managed to get hold of a small piece of a very recent fall - the Tamdakht Meteorite which fell in the Atlas Mountains, Morocco on 20 December 2008 at 22:37 hrs local time. It's stone chondrite meteorite which has quite a lot of metal in it. About 100 kgs have been recovered so far but my little slice weighs just 3.56 grams. I find it fascinating to think that this material was in space just a few months ago. Like most meteorites it was formed around 4.56 billion years ago and was probably part of a larger asteroid which has since been destroyed by collisions.

The 1st picture shows the small circular chondrules quite nicely and the 2nd is taken lit from a different angle to show the amount of metal in the stone. For scale, the slice is around 30 mm in length.

John

[The Warthog]

Very cool! I picked up two at a star party last year, one as a gift from a generous man at the party, and bought the other. One is Moroccan from an unknown fall, and the other from Russian. Both are Chondrites. I like to look at them and remind myself that these things fell from space.