http://praguemonitor.com/2009/05/07/czechs-uncover-rare-meteorite-australia
Czechs uncover rare meteorite in Australia C(TK | 7 May 2009 Prague, May 6 (CTK) - Czech astronomers have counted the trajectory and the landing of a rare meteorite from the inner Solar System and found its fragments in southwest Australia, along with their Australian and British colleagues, Pavel Spurny, from the Academy' Astronomic Institute, said Wednesday. The astronomers have called the meteorite Bunbura Roskhole, which means a black pearl. The meteorite was detected by a new bolide network in Nullarbor desert that Spurny and his British and Australian colleagues have installed. It has been the fifth meteorite with its "genealogy" in the world, said Spurny, head of the interplanetary mass section. Three of them were fully mapped by Czech astronomers, who have ranked among top experts in this field for decades, while the U.S. and Canadian teams mapped one each. Czechs have created the European bolide network the most important part of which is exactly the Czech network of monitoring stations. The network in Nullarbor desert covers the area of 200,000 square kilometres, which is 2.5 times larger than the Czech Republic. Spurny said the Australian bolide collided with the Earth on the trajectory crossing the inner Solar System. "For the first time in history astronomers have a solid body with this trajectory in their hands," Spurny stressed. They found three small fragments of the meteorite weighing from 150 to 180 grammes, called "achondrites" - stony meteorites from large cosmic bodies of the Solar System that consist of material similar to terrestrial basalts and do not contain iron. Experts succeeded in determining the area of the meteorite landing very precisely. The astronomers are now testing the findings. They are convinced that they will soon identify the matrix body which the bolide comes from, Spurny said. ______________________________________________ http://www.meteoritecentral.com Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list