| Location: |
Australia NSW |
| Category: |
L6 |
| Find: |
1994
|
| TKW: |
34kg |
| Description: |
On Saturday, July 2, 1994, a bolide fell over New South Wales, Australia. Newspapers around the world reported the event and its "earthquake-like vibrations throughout the area. Hundreds of distressed residents called police saying they had seen a huge white bright light plummeting toward the ground. A police spokeswoman said many people reported the walls in their homes shook when the meteorite hit. (News Record, North Hills, Pennsylvania, July 3, 1994). A recovery team was assembled and sent out in the direction the stone was believed to have fallen. A few days later, a 34 kg. meteorite was found within sand dunes. The meteorite did not have fresh crust of a fall, therefore it does not appear to be related to the bolide. This meteorite was classified as an L6 chonrite by William D. Birch, and noted in The Meteoritical Bulletin, No. 80, 1996 July (J. Grossman). "Homogeneous olivine, Fa25.6; feldspar, Ab84Or6; contains rare metal, abundant FeS." In Journal and Proceedings of The Royal Society of New South Wales, Volume 131 Parts 3 and 4, December 1998. Birch further described the meteorite as "a newly described L6 chondrite found in 1994 near the town of Broken Hill, in western New South Wales, Australia. It was a single stone, of mass 34 kg when found, and with a thin surface film of iron hydroxide and calcrete. The meteorite contains abundant chondrules, mainly of olivine-orthopyroxene in a coherent matrix of olivine, orthopyroxene and oligoclase. Troilite is the main opaque mineral, with only minor amounts of taenite and kamacite, and rare chromite. Electron probe microanalysis of the main minerals gave compositions typical of L5 chondrites. The Broken Hill meteorite shows no evidence of shock features and is moderately low on the scale of weathering." |
|
|
| Weight: |
295g |
| Nature: |
Part Slice |
| Description: |
Nicely polished on both sides. |
|
