A few meteorite specimens...

[John]

I don't know if this is of any interest but over the years I have have developed an interest in meteorites - those that have landed on earth especially. I have built up and then sold a couple of collections - the biggest of which numbered 30+ specimens from around the world. I should add that these were all brought rather than found - I have been meteorite hunting twice so far with, unsuprisingly, no results to show.

Recently I decided to invest a little(very little) in a few specimens before the prices start to rise again - the market is at rock bottom (pardon the pun) at the moment.

Here's a photo of what I have at the moment:

Clockwise from the top left we have:

1. A 7.5 gram slice of a stony meteorite found in North West Africa. Lot's of metal flakes visable in this.

2. A 2.4 gram slice of a rare type of stony meteorite - a Rumeritite Chrondrite. You can see loads of chrondrules in this piece.

3. A 23 gram individual iron meteorite from the Skihote-Alin (USSR) fall of 1947. This has scoops and flight markings where it's passage through the atmosphere has melted the surface.

4. A 14 gram fragment of the iron meteorite Canyon Diablo which fell 40,000 years ago and created Meteor Crater in Arizona.

For scale the largest specimen is around 3 cm across.

Almost all meteorites were formed around 4.5 billion years ago during the formation of the solar system. Irons are thought to have orginated as part of asteroid cores while stony metorites originated nearer, or on, the surface - before being blasted into space as a result of some impact or other. Some are known to have spent millions of years drifting in space and some just a few tens of thousands. They are the oldest material you can hold in the palm of your hand !.

I'll keep you updated as my collection grows if anyones interested.

John,

North Somerset

[The Warthog]

Cool! I like #4, especially.

[Caz]

How do you tell a meteorite from your average chunk of rock?

Caz

[OXO]

Skihote-Alin thats an awe-some Meteorite to own :shock:

[John]

How do you tell a meteorite from your average chunk of rock?

Caz

It's probably easiest if you have a look at this excellent information page from Arizona University:

http://meteorites.asu.edu/met-info/

In short the answer is that iron's look different to the surrounding rocks and soil - and they rust of course. Stones and Stony Irons are not so easy - they are often very difficult to spot - this is why Antarctica and dry deserts are good places to find meteorites - thay stand out more from the surrounding terrain. Metal detectors and very strong magnets are used to find meteorites as most have a high metal content (higher than the majority of earth rocks).

Hope that helps,

John.

[John]

Skihote-Alin thats an awe-some Meteorite to own :shock:

Yep - I agree they are great - a historically very important witnessed fall (the largest iron fall in recorded history I think), they look weird and wonderful and there's lots about.

Incidentally they are preserved so well because they fell into deep snow - near Vladivostok, Siberia.

John.

[OXO]

John, i remember reading about that Fall and was amazed when you posted a pic of the fragment you own, if i may be so bold how much do these Fragments(in grams) go for and is there a respectable dealer you could reccomend please?

Thanks

James

[John]

John, i remember reading about that Fall and was amazed when you posted a pic of the fragment you own, if i may be so bold how much do these Fragments(in grams) go for and is there a respectable dealer you could reccomend please?

Thanks

James

The biggest UK-based dealership is Fearnlea Meteorites based in Scotland - here is a link to their web site.

http://fernlea.tripod.com/forsale.html

I have brought from them in the past and they are very reputable - Rob Elliott who runs it was the advisor to the recent TV programme the Great Meteorite Hunt. Be prepared to be amazed and what they have to offer ...... and some of the prices ! - even "common" meteorites are rare stuff - rarer than gold or platinum - for example the Rumeritite Chrondrite slice that I have pictured above is part of a stone that weighed 722 grams - and that's all there is in the whole world !.

I tend to buy mine off e.bay through smaller dealers UK and worldwide based - I picked up that Skikhote-Alin for around £7 from the UK but a more usual price would have been £20 or so. For the common meteorite types think in terms of $1 to $5 per gram. The important thing IMHO is to buy from dealers accredited to the IMCA (International Meteorite Collectors Assciation) - you can be ptetty sure what you are getting is genuine then.

John

[OXO]

Hi John,

Thanks for the info and link much appricated ive bookmarked the link and will have a proper scout of it later, quite fancy getting some under my microscopes too

It's great when you can have some history to the pieces a reall buzz i imagine, i have some fossils and i get a buzz from holding them and researching what they are and were/when there from..

Cheers

James

[Caz]

So understanding that they're quite literally needles in haystacks to find, the best chance of me coming across one, is if it hits me on the back of the head....

Caz

[OXO]

So understanding that they're quite literally needles in haystacks to find, the best chance of me coming across one, is if it hits me on the back of the head....

Or johns link

[Caz]

So understanding that they're quite literally needles in haystacks to find, the best chance of me coming across one, is if it hits me on the back of the head....

Or johns link

I haven't read it yet...

Caz

[John]

So understanding that they're quite literally needles in haystacks to find, the best chance of me coming across one, is if it hits me on the back of the head....

Caz

Caz,

You could plan a holiday to Antarctica, the northern Sahara Desert, the Nullabar Plain, the Atacama Desert or the Sikhote-Alin mountains in Siberia ...... or Barwell in Leicestershire where the biggest UK fall was on Xmas Eve 1965 - they have found 45 kilos of that one so far but it's a stony meteorite and the UK weather is not too kind to them !!.

If by any chance one does hit you on the head, get your daughter to take her green specs off and photograph the impact crater - it's important to record these things for the scientists !!! ;-)

John.

[John]

....quite fancy getting some under my microscopes too .....

Look out for "thin sections" - very thin mounted slices designed for microscope examination. Don't know if Fernlea does them but someone on e.bay (worldwide) will be.

John.

[Caz]

or Barwell in Leicestershire where the biggest UK fall was on Xmas Eve 1965 - they have found 45 kilos of that one so far but it's a stony meteorite and the UK weather is not too kind to them !!.

Sadly I don't fly.... :shock: but Leicestershire I can do... 8)

If by any chance one does hit you on the head, get your daughter to take her green specs off and photograph the impact crater - it's important to record these things for the scientists !!! ;-)

:D I would worry if she was concerning herself with photographic evidence, rather than checking to see if her mum is fully conscious or not!

Caz

[OXO]

I thought one had

[The Warthog]

How do you tell a meteorite from your average chunk of rock?

Caz

Meteorites are much more expensive. If you find some guy down at the seaside selling meteorites for tuppence a gram, they're probably just ordinary basalt. You can take that for granite.

If you do get hit in the back of the head by a meteorite, it will hurt, and may land you in hospital. It would be something like getting hit in the back of the head by a chunk of concrete falling from a high building, as small meteorites don't go all that fast by the time they reach Earth's surface. Of course, if you get hit in the back of the head by a chunk of concrete from a building, you can't sell it to a museum for thousands of £s, You could set up a stand at the seaside, and sell bits of it for tuppence a gram, as meteorite. Then again, if you're hit in the back of the head by a meteorite, you can't sue anyone for thousands of £s, as you can if you're hit in the head by a chunk of concrete falling off a building.

[OXO]

Wise words there WH

[John]

Apparently a woman in the USA (well it would be...) was hit on the thigh by a meteorite in the 1950's. The only recorded fatality that I know of was a dog that was reputedly killed by a meteorite that had come from Mars. This fell at El-Nakhla in Egypt in 1911.

Meteorites that hit man made things (or people or pets) are known as "Hammer Stones" and are very collectable. The Barwell Meteorite hit loads of houses and a factory and one bit ended up in someones plant pot on a window sill !!.

For those that are interested here's a web site that lists famous meteories and tells their stories:

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/M/meteorites_famous.html

John.

[OXO]

Cool link again John, i couldnt help but post this from there :shock:

Williamette meteorite

A 15.5-ton iron meteorite (type IIIA) that is the largest meteorite ever found in the United States. It was found in 1902 near Oregon City in Clackamas Co., Oregon. Aside from its size, its most striking features are a well-defined nose-cone shape and a deeply pitted rear surface, the pits and grooves having been produced by weathering of the exposed surface of the meteorite in the wet Oregon climate. Its name comes from the fact that it was purchased in 1906 for the American Museum of Natural History in New York by Mrs. William E. Dodge.

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/W/Williamette_meteorite.html

My old WW2 tin hat wouldn't help much!

[John]

Nice one James - the meteorite world is full of stories like this - and a new one could happen any day !.

John.

[OXO]

John,

I heard that there's millions of particles of meteorites in our Gutters and there are ways to sift through the stuff in Gutters and have a collection of Meteorite particles any truth in this?

Thanks

James

[The Warthog]

I have heard the first part of that one, but not that it is possible to sift them out. There are something like 30,000 tonnes of meteorites per year falling on Earth, so some of it has to filter down through the atmosphere and plug up our eavestroughs.

[OXO]

This may sounds daft so forgive me people but simply going over the materials with a Magnet would be a start with certain types of Meteorites wouldnt it?

I'll get my Coat if i need too :?

[John]

Given the tonnage of meteoric dust that falls each year (2/3rds of it into water presumably) I suppose there has got to be a chance of such material being present in virtually any scoop of soil whether from a roof gutter or otherwise. I think the problem will be separating the few extraterrestial grains from all the others - A powerful magnet might work but there are some earth-orginated materials that are also attracted to magnets so you could not gurantee that what was sticking to your magnet was from space.

Also, even though 30,000 tonnes per year sounds a lot, spread over the surface of the Earth (how do you work out the surface area of a sphere again ?) they would still be rather scarce I reckon.

Mind you it's going to be a tough choice this evening between crawling around my guttering dragging a powerful magnet behind me or browsing e.bay with a glass of chilled Chardonnay in my hand..... :-)

Maybe I'm not cut out to be a meteorite hunter !.

John