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Re: meteorite musings



Bernd kindly wrote:

  Gene - James Marlin schrieb:
> It is interesting to note that during this shower,
> the Farmington, KS, meteorite fell ...

Farmington (L5) - black, brecciated
Washington County, Kansas
Fell 1890, June 25, 13:00 hrs
After the appearance of a fireball, and detonations, a stone of 188 lb
was seen to fall, and another of 9 lb was found, F.H. Snow, Science,
1890, 16, p.38.
A fragment of an  A p o l l o   a s t e r o i d ?  (B.J. Levin et al.,
Icarus, 1976, 28, p. 307).


Hello Bernd and All,

In a planetary geology textbook, I have seen the Farmington meteorite
listed as one with a known orbit (along with Lost City). I assumed it was a
mistake, but maybe there is more to this. Also, the Smithsonian has a slice
of Farmington in their main display along with a close-up photograph of its
structure due to an impact.

Does anyone have the issue of Icarus Bernd mentioned containing the Levin
article? I would like to know the reasoning behind their assumption that
Farmington is from an Apollo asteroid.

Also, for those interested in the importance of the Portales meteorite,
here is some text from the Smithsonian explaining the nature of
mesosiderites:

"Mesosiderites are enigmatic mixtures of metal and igneous rock.
Catastrophic collisions more than four billion years ago may explain this
unexpected mingling of nickel-iron alloy from the core and rock from the
surface of one or more large asteroids.

The course Widmanstatten structures in the metal suggest that it cooled
very slowly, probably because the rock-metal mixture was deeply buried
following melting and mixing."

Sincerely,

Martin



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