----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2004 1:38
PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Help me solve a
mystery - NWA mystery
Hi,
app. 2 weeks ago,
Steve Arnold (Illinois) sold a "mystery NWA" on ebay. This is the text that
came with the auction (as often with Steve, no pic):
"Up here for auction is a mystery.This is
a 134.9 gram whole stone that has been cut by AL LANG.It is a unclassified NWA
mystery stone.I had bob haag,richard norton,al lang,ed thompson,blaine reed,
and a few others give thier opinion on what it might be.No one knows.It has a
very rich dark brown matrix.Very few or none at all with chondrules.High in
metal, but it pulls very weakly even with a strong magnet.You can be the lucky
winner of this mystery stone and you can try and get it classified.It measures
6.5 cm x 5.2 cm x 3.8 cm.I will start the bidding at $1.00. Good
luck."
Well, I bidded and
won the item. Today it arrived. I had a closer look at it, took some
photographs and am looking for your expertise now.
Let me describe
the tactile impressions: The item is feels pretty cold when you hold it, and
it has about the right weight for a meteorite of this size. However: the
outside feels quite "soft", more like an ordinary stone than a meteorite, like
a pebble that has been in the water.
There is indeed a
lot of metal visible from the outside, but on the cut surface, the deeper you
go inside, the less metal you find. A close examination with a 10x
magnification showed no chondrules at all, at least for me.
Here are three
photos of the object (they are quite large in order to reveal more details). I
have brightened the photos and added some contrast and some mild sharpening,
but I'd say they are true to the visual appearance of the
object:
So - what's your
impression? Is it a meteorite at all? What is it?
Bernhard
