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Serving The Meteorite Community Since 2002

New Orleans revisited. Where is the meteorite? Either one?

New Orleans Meteorite fragment
The crust on New Orleans looks much like what I’ve seen on aubrite achondrites.

One year ago we lost Dave B. Gheesling, one of the greats in this gentlemanly art of meteorite collecting. Dave valued friendships and made it obvious with his vast collection of pictures with meteorite friends. So take a moment and see the big picture on Dave’s Falling Rocks website filled with friend photos.


Back to New Orleans…

New Orleans Meteorite fragment
As a general rule, the interior and exterior of a freshly fallen meteorite usually differ greatly in color or contrast from each other. Not so with New Orleans.

On September 23, 2003 a total of 19.26 kilograms of H5 fell from the sky and onto a house in New Orleans, Louisiana. Not just onto, but through the house, from second floor roof to dirt under crawl space. Once the drywall dust settled, the New Orleans meteorite was born.

 

New Orleans Meteorite fragment
There is earthly debris stuck in the crust of New Orleans. I wonder how that happened.

 

2003 wasn’t all that long ago, but in today’s world, that feels like a whole world ago. Since the fall of the New Orleans meteorite, New Orleans has found several other ways to make the news. So to visit that past world, I dug my 35 gram crusted fragment of New Orleans out of the safe and spent some time looking at it again. It really does look like concrete. But don’t just take my word for it, here is a link to an interview with the homeowner who discovered the alien crime of breaking and entering.

 

New Orleans Meteorite fragment
Landing in a humid location, even if collected immediately, the environment is still hostile for iron-rich condrites.

 

And here’s a news story about the fall of the New Orleans meteorite. And a final question here is that there are rumors that the main mass of the New Orleans meteorite was completely lost in a flood. Does anyone have further information about that? Please email me at accretiondesk@gmail.com .

 

But wait! There is another “meteorite” in New Orleans, one called the Audubon Park Meteorite. While not quite as authentic as the New Orleans meteorite proper, the Audubon Park Meteorite is probably better known to those not in the know. Here’s a video that shows the iron stone in all it’s glory.

Audubon Park Meteorite

Umm, yeah.

Until next time….

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