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The 60-tonne, 2.7 m-long (8.9 ft) Hoba meteorite in Namibia is the largest known intact meteorite.[1]A meteorite is a rock that originated in outer space and has fallen to the surface of a planet or moon.
A series of many meteors appearing seconds or minutes apart and appearing to originate from the same fixed point in the sky is called a meteor shower. An estimated 25 million meteoroids, micrometeoroids and other space debris enter Earth's atmosphere each day, [ 9 ] which results in an estimated 15,000 tonnes of that material entering the ...
Widmanstätten patterns, also known as Thomson structures, are figures of long phases of nickel–iron, found in the octahedrite shapes of iron meteorite crystals and some pallasites. Iron meteorites are very often formed from a single crystal of iron-nickel alloy, or sometimes a number of large crystals that may be many meters in size, and ...
Meteorite classification may indicate that a "genetic" relationship exists between similar meteorite specimens. Similarly classified meteorites may share a common origin, and therefore may come from the same astronomical object (such as a planet, asteroid, or moon) known as a parent body.
Meteoric iron forms a few different structures that can be seen by etching or in thin sections of meteorites. The Widmanstätten pattern forms when meteoric iron cools and kamacite is exsolved from taenite in the form of lamellas. [5] Plessite is a more fine-grained intergrowth of the two minerals in between the lamella of the Widmanstätten ...
Iron meteorites, also called siderites or ferrous meteorites, are a type of meteorite that consist overwhelmingly of an iron–nickel alloy known as meteoric iron that usually consists of two mineral phases: kamacite and taenite. Most iron meteorites originate from cores of planetesimals, [3] with the exception of the IIE iron meteorite group. [4]
Fossil meteorite – a meteorite that was buried under layers of sediment before the start of the Quaternary period. Some or all of the original cosmic material has been replaced by diagenetic minerals. [3]: 320 (It is, however, not a fossil). Fusion crust – a coating on meteorites that forms during their passage through the atmosphere.
This chondrite has a multicolored mix of chondrules of varying size and shape. Ochansk Meteorite, an ordinary chondrite with a fusion crust, found in 1887 in Russia. The ordinary chondrites (sometimes called the O chondrites) are a class of stony chondritic meteorites. They are by far the most numerous group, comprising 87% of all finds. [1]