On the Trail of the World's Great Meteorites
Arizona State University Center for Meteorite Studies
Meteorite Vault photos Feb 3 2023
Holbrook
Arizona, USA - July 1912. L6 Chondrite.
The first great meteorite shower of the 20th century, and one of America's most famous meteorite showers. After a series of explosions and rumbles, an estimated 14,000 stones rained down on this railway town in northeastern Arizona. The shower was witnessed by a farm boy who exclaimed "it's raining rocks out there !"
The stones varied in size from grains of sand to pea sized to a 6.6kg mass. Later, H. H. Nininger found tiny specks, gathered by ants in ant-hills, using a magnet. People have continued to find small specimens in the strewnfield in recent years.
Brenham
A pallasite discovered in Kansas in 1882.
Mount Joy
An iron from Pennsylvania in 1887
Iowa, USA. Chondrite.
A witnessed fall in 1847
Marion
Waconda
Kansas, USA.
An L6 chondrite from 1873.
Parnallee
A witnessed fall from India in 1857.
Maslyanino
Found in a wheat field in Russia in 1992.
Allende
Fell in the canine-sounding area of Chihuahua, Mexico in Feb 1969.
A very well-studied meteorite, it is the largest known carbonaceous chondrite.
Tiglit
From a witnessed fireball in Morocco in 2021. Many stones were found around a nomad's tent. An aubrite.
Dronino
This iron meteorite from Russia was discovered in 2000 by a man who was picking wild mushrooms.
Camel Donga
Western Australia - 1984. Eucrite.
This has a very glossy, shiny fusion crust. From the asteroid Vesta.
L'Aigle
France - 1803. Chondrite.
A shower of about 3,000 stones fell in broad daylight, witnessed by many people. This incident attracted public attention leading to research in the new science of meteoritics. Jean-Baptise Biot of the French Academy of Sciences investigated the fall, then wrote a paper that caused a scientific paradigm shift proving that meteorites are from space.​
Bondoc
Luzon, Phillipines - 1956. Mesosiderite.
An 888.6kg mass was obtained and studied by H.H. Nininger. It contained multiple large nodules of iron with silicate inclusions.
Sikhote-Alin
Russia - 1947 - Iron. 66.2kg specimen.
In one of the 20th century's most epic meteoric events, a 70 ton iron mass hurtled through Earth's atmosphere on Feb 12 1947. As the object slowed, the surface of the huge meteoroid super-heated. It then broke up in a cataclysmic explosion and rained down thousands of pieces of sculpted iron (the largest being 745 kg) and shrapnel over southeastern Siberia. Many of the larger pieces formed craters. Witnesses reported a fireball brighter than the sun and a dust trail that lingered for hours. A picture drawn by an artist witness (P.I. Medvedev who was 75 miles away) was featured on a 1957 Russian postage stamp.
Vermillion
Arispe
Mexico - 1896. Iron.
Kansas - 1991. Pallasite.
Renfrow
Tres Castillos
Oklahoma, USA - 1986.
Mexico - 1992. Iron.
