Click on the links below to read more about the meteorites in the Center's collection, and view meteorite photos!
Kayakent
April's Meteorite of the Month is Kayakent, an iron (IIIAB) that fell in April of 1961, near the village of Kayakent, Turkey. Photo © ASU/CMS: The cross-hatched structure in the metal (called Widmanstätten pattern) in this sample indicates extremely slow cooling, on the order of 10o Celsius per million years. The meteorite was […]
Peckelsheim
March's Meteorite of the Month is Peckelsheim, an achondrite (diogenite-pm) that fell the afternoon of March 3, 1953. According to the Meteoritical Bulletin (MB 46), a group of workers in the forest outside of Peckelsheim, Germany, heard "a whine similar to that of shell-splinter" around 2:30 PM. The meteorite hit a tree branch, and landed […]
Paragould
February 17, 2020, marks the 90th anniversary of the fall of the Paragould meteorite, an ordinary (LL5) chondrite that landed in Arkansas during the early morning hours of February 17, 1930. The fall was observed by several witnesses hundreds of miles from the meteorite's eventual landing site in Paragould, Arkansas. These included the engineer […]
Benton
January's Meteorite of the Month is Benton, an (LL6) ordinary chondrite that fell in York County, New Brunswick, in 1949. The Benton meteorite's fiery entry into Earth's atmosphere was witnessed January 16, in overcast twilight conditions, and the meteorite itself was quickly collected. Benton is the only meteorite from New Brunswick. To date, 2.84 kg […]
Ourique
December's Meteorite of the Month is Ourique, an (H4) ordinary chondrite that fell in the early hours December 28, 1998, in Aldea del Palhieros, Baixa Alentejo, Portugal. According to the Meteoritical Bulletin (MB 83): Many stones with a total mass probably near 20 kg were recovered along a rural path after a brilliant fireball and […]
Manitouwabing
November's Meteorite of the Month is Manitouwabing, an iron (IIIAB) meteorite found south of Manitouwabing Lake, Ontario, Canada, in November of 1962. In his 1964 paper, The Metallography of Manitouwabing, Parry Sound, Ontario: A New Canadian Siderite, R. Knox Jr. describes how the meteorite was identified: About a dozen years ago Philip Johnson, a furniture […]
Hamlet
October's Meteorite of the Month is Hamlet, an ordinary (LL4) chondrite that fell the evening of October 13th, 1959, in Indiana. According to the Meteoritical Bulletin (MB 17): The meteorite struck a house, breaking off a piece of the gutter, and was found in the yard about 30 minutes after its fall. The stone has […]
Murchison
September 28th marks the 50th anniversary of the Murchison meteorite fall, one of the most scientifically important in human history. This carbonaceous (CM2) chondrite was witnessed entering Earth's atmosphere the between 10:45 and 11:00 AM, in Victoria, Australia. The meteorite broke up as it fell, and several fragments were recovered, totalling over 100 kg (220 […]
Breitscheid
August's Meteorite of the Month is Breitscheid, an ordinary (H5) chondrite that fell the afternoon of August 11, 1956, in Hesse, Germany. According to the Meteoritical Bulletin (MB 2): The fall of the meteorite was observed as a short, light yellow, somewhat reddish fiery trail. Judging by the broken branches of trees and the aspect […]
Thuathe
July's Meteorite of the Month is Thuathe, an ordinary (H4/5) chondrite that fell in Lesotho the afternoon of July 21, 2002. According to the Meteoritical Bulletin (MB 87), the meteorite exploded over Lesotho, approximately 12 km east of the capital city of Maseru. The explosion was accompanied by an extraordinarily loud, 15 s long noise […]
