Samelia is a IIIAB iron meteorite that fell the evening of May 20, 1921, in India. In a 1924 publication, Sir Lewis Leigh Fermor (then acting director of the Geological Survey of India) described witness accounts of the meteorite’s fall: “The fireball moved from south to north and left a white trail in the sky. […]
Category: Meteorites
L’Aigle
April’s Meteorite of the Month is L’Aigle, an ordinary (L6) chondrite that fell in Orme, France on April 26, 1803. The L’Aigle meteorite fall, which produced a shower of over 3,000 stones, proved to European scientists that rocks fall from the sky. Although people had seen meteorites fall before 1803, their stories had typically been […]
Norton County
Norton County fell February 18th of 1948, on the Kansas/Nebraska border. Norton County is a rare type of meteorite called an aubrite, which is an enstatite achondrite. Aubrites are dominated by enstatite – a pyroxene mineral containing Mg, Si, and O. This mineral is white in Norton County, as opposed to the more normal green […]
Coolidge
Coolidge is a carbonaceous (C4-ungrouped) chondrite found in Kansas in 1937. According to Meteoritical Society classification, type-4 carbonaceous chondrites mostly have Mg/Si ratios near solar value, oxygen isotope compositions that plot below the terrestrial fractionation line, and abundant metamorphosed chondrules. At the Buseck Center for Meteorite Studies, collection curator and research professor Laurence Garvie deciphers […]
Camel Donga
Camel Donga is an achondrite found on the Nullarbor Plain of Western Australia in 1984. The word “donga” is a term for “campsite” in Australia. Camel Donga is a eucrite (monomict breccia), part of the HED group of meteorites (Howardites-Eucrites-Diogenites). These meteorites are believed to originate from the cooling of magma on the surface of […]
