American Pop! Comic Books to Science Fiction…and Beyond! January 17 – June 8 No admission fee Explore the ongoing influences of comic books, television, movies and science fiction on some of today's leading artists, scientists and academic professionals at the Tempe Center for the Arts! Meteorites from the Center for Meteorite Studies Vintage super hero […]
2014’s First Asteroid Discovery!
The first asteroid to be discovered in 2014 appears to have broken up over the Atlantic Ocean, according to NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office. Entering Earth's atmosphere in the early hours of January 1, 2014, this small asteroid, labeled 2014 AA, was first identified by researchers at the Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) near Tucson, Arizona. […]
Seasons Greetings
2013 Season's Greetings from the Center for Meteorite Studies About 300 years ago, a 3,500 tonne iron meteorite slammed into the desert of Saudi Arabia, instantly melting the sand and forming craters up to 100 m in diameter. The craters are surrounded by impact glass, such as the one pictured, which […]
Unique Meteor Shower Gets Underway!
11 Dec 2013 Residents of Tucson, AZ were startled by a sonic boom Tuesday evening! The event was captured on video, and coincided with the beginning of this year's Geminid meteor shower. Unlike most other meteor showers, the Geminid meteor shower is unique in that the particles that create the telltale streaks across the sky during […]
Losttown
Losttown is an iron meteorite (IID) found in Georgia, in 1868. This specimen exhibits excellent Widmanstätten pattern (named for Count Alois von Beckh Widmanstätten, director of the Austrian Imperial Porcelain Works, in 1808), created by the interlocking crystal structure of two nickel-iron alloys. Most iron meteorites are believed to originate in the cores of large […]