A meteorite is a solid piece of debris from an object, such as a comet, asteroid, or meteoroid, that originates in outer space and survives its passage through the atmosphere to reach the surface of a planet or moon. When the original object enters the atmosphere, various factors such as friction, pressure, and chemical interactions with the atmospheric gases cause it to heat up and radiate energy. It then becomes a meteor and forms a fireball, also known as a shooting star or falling star; astronomers call the brightest examples "bolides". Once it settles on the larger body's surface, the meteor becomes a meteorite. Meteorites vary greatly in size. For geologists, a bolide is a meteorite large enough to create an impact crater.
Meteor Crater is a meteorite impact crater approximately 37 miles (60 km) east of Flagstaff and 18 miles (29 km) west of Winslow in the northern Arizona desert of the United States. The site had several earlier names, and fragments of the meteorite are officially called the Canyon Diablo Meteorite, after the adjacent Cañon Diablo. Because the United States Board on Geographic Names recognizes names of natural features derived from the nearest post office, the feature acquired the name of "Meteor Crater" from the nearby post office named Meteor.
Sutton Hoo is the site of two early medieval cemeteries dating from the 6th to 7th centuries near Woodbridge, in Suffolk, England. Archaeologists have been excavating the area since 1938. One cemetery had an undisturbed ship burial with a wealth of Anglo-Saxon artefacts. Most of these objects are now held by the British Museum. Scholars believe Rædwald of East Anglia is the most likely person to have been buried in the ship. The site is important in establishing the history of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia as well as illuminating the early Anglo-Saxon period which lacked historical documentation.
The Wabar craters are impact craters located in Saudi Arabia first brought to the attention of Western scholars by British Arabist, explorer, writer and Colonial Office intelligence officer St John Philby, who discovered them while searching for the legendary city of Ubar in Arabia's Rub' al Khali in 1932.
A meteorite classification system attempts to group similar meteorites and allows scientists to communicate with a standardized terminology when discussing them. Meteorites are classified according to a variety of characteristics, especially mineralogical, petrological, chemical, and isotopic properties.
Pearcedale is a township and coastal rural locality in Victoria, Australia, 49 km south-east of Melbourne's central business district. Its local government areas are the City of Casey and the Shire of Mornington Peninsula. A bus service operates to and from Frankston railway station via Baxter. At the 2016 Census, Pearcedale had a population of 3,821.
Campo del Cielo refers to a group of iron meteorites and to the area in Argentina where they were found. The site straddles the provinces of Chaco and Santiago del Estero, 1,000 kilometers (620 mi) north-northwest of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is half that distance, north-east, to Paraguay's capital, Asunción. The crater field covers 3 by 18.5 kilometres and contains at least 26 craters, the largest being 115 by 91 metres.
The Willamette Meteorite, officially named Willamette and originally known as Tomanowos by the Clackamas Chinook Native American tribe is an iron-nickel meteorite found in the U.S. state of Oregon. It is the largest meteorite found in North America and the sixth largest in the world. There was no impact crater at the discovery site; researchers believe the meteorite landed in what is now Canada or Montana, and was transported as a glacial erratic to the Willamette Valley during the Missoula Floods at the end of the last Ice Age. It has long been held sacred by indigenous peoples of the Willamette Valley, including the federally recognized Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon (CTGRC).
The Cape York meteorite, also known as the Innaanganeq meteorite, is one of the largest known iron meteorites, classified as a medium octahedrite in chemical group IIIAB. In addition to many small fragments, at least eight large fragments with a total mass of 58 tons have been recovered, the largest weighing 31 tonnes. The meteorite is loosely named after the location where the largest fragment was found: 23 miles (37 km) east of Cape York, in Savissivik, Meteorite Island, Greenland.
Meteoric iron, sometimes meteoritic iron, is a native metal and early-universe protoplanetary-disk remnant found in meteorites and made from the elements iron and nickel mainly in the form of the mineral phases kamacite and taenite. Meteoric iron makes up the bulk of iron meteorites but is also found in other meteorites. Apart from minor amounts of telluric iron, meteoric iron is the only naturally occurring native metal of the element iron on the Earth's surface.
Ataxites are a structural class of iron meteorites with a high nickel content and show no Widmanstätten patterns upon etching.
Iron meteorites, also known as siderites, or ferrous meteorites, are a type of meteorites that consist overwhelmingly of an iron–nickel alloy known as meteoric iron that usually consists of two mineral phases: kamacite and taenite. Iron meteorites originate from cores of planetesimals.
Pultusk is an H5 ordinary chondrite meteorite which fell on 30 January 1868 in Poland. The event has been known as the stony meteorite shower with the largest number of pieces yet recorded in history. Made up of rocky debris, it consists of pyroxene or olivine chondrules deployed in mass plagioclase, there being also kamacite.
Mbozi is an ungrouped iron meteorite found in Tanzania. It is one of the world's largest meteorites, variously estimated as the fourth-largest to the eighth-largest, it is located near the city of Mbeya in Tanzania's southern highlands. The meteorite is 3 metres (9.8 ft) long, 1 metre high, and weighs an estimated 16 metric tons.
The Dronino meteorite is a 40-kilogram (88 lb) iron meteorite that was found in the Ryazan Oblast of Russia in July 2000. It is classified as an ataxite.
The Nantan meteorite is an iron meteorite that belongs to the IAB group and the MG subgroup.
The Twannberg meteorite is a hexahedrite iron meteorite. It is the only meteorite of the IIG group found in Europe and the largest meteorite ever found in Switzerland.
This is a glossary of terms used in meteoritics, the science of meteorites.
IIAB meteorites are a group of iron meteorites. Their structural classification ranges from hexahedrites to octahedrites. IIABs have the lowest concentration of nickel of all iron meteorite groups. All iron meteorites are derived from the metallic planetary cores of their respective parent bodies, but in the case of the IIABs the metallic magma separated to form not only this meteorite group but also the IIG group.
The Chelyabinsk meteorite is the fragmented remains of the large Chelyabinsk meteor of 15 February 2013 which reached the ground after the meteor's passage through the atmosphere. The descent of the meteor, visible as a brilliant superbolide in the morning sky, caused a series of shock waves that shattered windows, damaged approximately 7,200 buildings and left 1,500 people injured. The resulting fragments were scattered over a wide area.
