Hello all, Thought this might be of some interest concerning the rarest meteorite, at least from a historical viewpoint. At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, Henry A. Ward thought Nobleborough (1823 Maine fall) was one of the rarest of the meteorites he owned. At this time Ward owned one of the world’s largest meteorite collections that was on par with the national collections in Vienna, London, and Paris. The Ward-Coonley collection (now part of the Field Museum collection in Chicago) contained 603 different locations in 1904 and weighed nearly 2500 kilograms. In a collection catalog of the same year, Ward stated that the Nobleborough meteorite, the third recovered meteorite fall in the U.S., was the “rarest American aerolite” [stony meteorite]. At this time, there were other stony meteorites with a smaller preserved weight such as Deal (~30 gms.) and Bethlehem (13 gms.), but they were ordinary chondrites. Nobleborough was a rare, differentiated stony meteorite, and only four had fallen or been found in the U.S. to that time. Two were eucrites, Nobleborough (~78 gms TPW) and Petersburg (1.8 kg.). Frankfort (stone) (650 gms) was a howardite and Bishopville (5.9 kg.) an aubrite. Most of the Nobleborough mass had been lost and collections had only small specimens. Merrill (1934), in writing about valuation of meteorites, lists three main factors that determined their value; present known weight, petrographic composition, and number of owners of pieces. About Nobleborough, he noted: “The climax is reached, however, in the case of the stone of Nobleboro [Nobleborough], Maine of which there was originally from four to six pounds, but seventy-eight grams are now accounted for, distributed among eleven collections, seven of which record only ‘splinters’.” Needless to say, most curators were extremely reluctant to part with any of the Nobleborough meteorite from their cabinets and no doubt Ward was ecstatic to have acquired a 19 gram specimen for his. As for myself, I too would certainly like a "splinter" in my collection.
Cheers, Frank ______________________________________________ http://www.meteoritecentral.com Meteorite-list mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
