An Old Man and his Old Meteorites -

Ensisheim slices are not getting any bigger so I plan on preserving this one as long as possible.

I’m getting old. There’s no denying it. Not that old, but old enough to know that retirement is not right now but I can see it from here. So when I take a good hard look at my meteorite collection, I consider that downsizing a real possibility. But with that downsizing comes a very real and practical implementation of the “If I could only have 10 meteorites” game many of us often play.

Novo Urei — The Novi Urei is the namesake for the Ureilites. And Ureilites are crazy rare and unusual. I only wish they were named after the famous scientist Herald Urey.

A quick glance at my collection and a couple specimens obviously make the top 10 list, at least in my mind. First is Ensisheim, followed by Barboton and then Novo Urei. Ogi has always been one of my favorites, and Tabor has family significance. Both are stones and both fell in the 1700s. I really like the Lixna story about it bringing good luck, while the Borodino fragment in my collection reminds me of the incredible loss of life in that battle. At this point, 10 is in sight so decisions are getting difficult.

A meteorite named after Diogenes must be interesting. Diogenites are subsurface material on an asteroid. Eucrites are the surface, and Howardites are, as Blaine Reed once told me, what you get if you put a Diogenite and a Eucrite in a blender. This crusted quarter slice of the Johnstown diogenite is rich with geologic intrigue.

Miller is a fun one to own, as is a complete slice of Lost City. Peekskill is cool, but is that enough? A 78g crusted partial slice of the diogenite Johnstowns always impresses me, but so does Chevrony Kut as a stunning eucrite. Krymkya is as beautiful a chondrite as they come, but my oriented Millbillillie is stunning. And while thinking about crust, my complete Stannern is mindboggeling. And if considering complete individuals, I have always enjoyed my small but complete individual of the Łowicz mesosiderite. Here are some images that help define my struggle.

An old fall that created a political mess. Placing folk tales in the public record was how the fall of Barbotan was described after the news was published.

The 1812 Battle of Borodino was a colossal loss of life. But in that tragedy was a a small meteorite that fell and somehow survived the war and made it through centuries before landing in my collection.

Eucrites vary in their looks, but Chevrony Kut has a rich black and white matrix covered in the glossy fusion crust of calcium-rich achondrites.

Low numbered chondrites like this slice of Krymka represent, to me anyway, what the birth of the solar system looked like when chondrules were fighting with each other for mass.

Lixna was thought to have supernatural powers so pieces and dust of this fall were carried like good luck charms. As far as I know, it worked!

Ogi held steady a giant loom in the sky. So when it fell to earth, it was prized as both a relic and a sacred stone. For over two centuries it remained within the holdings of a single Japanese family.

Complete stones are always a treat, but as the supply from a witnessed fall gets sliced open, the value of unmolested individuals goes up. This is one of the very few complete individuals of Stannern.

Tabor is a special stone to me since my ancestors are from Tabor in what is now the Czech Republic. I like to imagine my great… grandfather or grandmother watching this stone’s arrive with a light show and a nearby thump.

Over the years I have refined my meteorite collection to the point where I enjoy and appreciate each and every specimen. No exceptions. Of the 250 or so locations represented in my collection, only about five are pure finds. I included the qualifier “pure” as in there is absolutely no recorded evidence that the recovered material was seen to fall. Of course there are some near misses such as Canyon Diablo and Henbury, but I am more concerned about more obvious connections between observations, both visual or auditory, and reasonably unweathered recovered meteorites. But that is such a small assortment it barely deserves mention. A few that do deserve mention include Marsland, Twodot, and Jerome.

The difficulty in prioritizing my specimens makes it obvious to me that I am not ready to stop collecting meteorites, just thin the herd a little or make the personal enjoyment more manageable. And oddly, I have discovered some specimens in my collection in need of more appreciation. Of course that just muddies the decision waters more, but also will make for a great followup article to this one.

Until next time….

An Old Man and his Old Meteorites

About The Author

Martin Horejsi