Padvarninkai fell February 9, 1929, in Adroniski, Lithuania. Close to 4 kg of material were recovered days after the witnessed fall, and the meteorite was originally classified as a Martian shergottite due to its maskelynite content. This classification was updated, however, upon further analysis, and Padvarninkai is now classified as a monomict eucrite, part of […]
Pultusk
Pultusk is an H5 chondrite that fell January 30, 1868, near the town of Pultusk in northeastern Poland. One of the largest meteorite showers in recorded history at the time, the fall is said to have produced tens of thousands of stones, and over 250 kg of material was recovered. The Center for Meteorite Studies […]
Happy New Year!
Wishing you All the best in 2015! from the Center for Meteorite Studies Northwest Africa 7611 is a lunar meteorite found near the Moroccan/Algerian border in May of 2012. The total known weight of the original specimen was 916 grams, and this 311-gram piece, donated to the Center by collector Jay Piatek, is the largest […]
The Dunes of Titan
Experiments with the high pressure wind tunnel at Arizona State University’s Planetary Aeolian Laboratory provide key data for understanding dunes on Saturn’s moon Titan. Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is one of the few solar system bodies — and the only planetary moon — known to have fields of wind-blown dunes on its surface. (The others […]
ASU donor and Center for Meteorite Studies featured in Science Magazine article on the Black Beauty Martian meteorite!
A recent article published in Science features the Martian meteorite NWA 7034 (aka Black Beauty), and details its discovery and distribution among collections. This meteorite is a polymict breccia containing a diverse assemblage of igneous and “sedimentary” materials. It was most likely produced by impact, but also involved volcanic and low-temperature alteration processes. The bulk […]
