Meteorite Times Magazine Contents by Editor Featured Monthly Articles Accretion Desk by Martin Horejsi Jim’s Fragments by Jim Tobin Meteorite Market Trends by Michael Blood Bob’s Findings by Robert Verish IMCA Insights by The IMCA Team Micro Visions by John Kashuba Norm’s Tektite Teasers by Norm Lehrman Meteorite Calendar by Anne Black Meteorite of the Month by Editor Tektite of the Month by Editor Terms Of Use Materials contained in and linked to from this website do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of The Meteorite Exchange, Inc., nor those of any person connected therewith. In no event shall The Meteorite Exchange, Inc. be responsible for, nor liable for, exposure to any such material in any form by any person or persons, whether written, graphic, audio or otherwise, presented on this or by any other website, web page or other cyber location linked to from this website. The Meteorite Exchange, Inc. does not endorse, edit nor hold any copyright interest in any material found on any website, web page or other cyber location linked to from this website. The Meteorite Exchange, Inc. shall not be held liable for any misinformation by any author, dealer and or seller. In no event will The Meteorite Exchange, Inc. be liable for any damages, including any loss of profits, lost savings, or any other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, consequential, or other damages arising out of this service. © Copyright 2002–2012 The Meteorite Exchange, Inc. All rights reserved. No reproduction of copyrighted material is allowed by any means without prior written permission of the copyright owner. Meteorite Times Magazine Ochansk: If it’s abundant, it better be good by Martin Horejsi An August 1887 Witnessed Fall: Ochansk, Russia Ochansk: If it’s abundant, it better be good. With 500kg of the brecciated H4 named Ochansk arriving on earth, a collector desiring a piece should focus on collectability and a historical paper trail. In this particular case, the specimen has traveled through at least four documented collections. At about one o’clock in the afternoon on August 30, 1887, 500kg of H4 chondrite fell from the sky following a glowing meteor and many loud sounds. Landing near the village of Tabory, near Okhansk, the now-named meteorite has made its way into most collections worldwide. The largest specimen that fell was recorded to be 115kg, and the current main mass is listed as 100kg and living in the University of Kazan in Tatarstan, Russia. Ochansk is a cement meteorite. In other words, it would be perfectly camouflaged if it fell into a pile of broken concrete. The specimen label of 267A.1 is from a famous collector and mineral dealer who used the number/letter/decimal designation as a direct reference to the fourth edition of the Catalogue of Meteorites.The label uses a designation from the 1985 version of the Catalogue (aka: the Blue Book). In this case, the meteorite that contains this labile is found on page 267, and is the first meteorite on the first column of the page. Specimens with cards from the Humboldt University in Berlin are exceedingly rare these days. In some cases, the cards may be worth more than the actual specimen, but of course of little value without the specimen. Collecting historical witnessed falls often requires the virtues of patience and perseverance. However, those virtues don’t always apply to the simple acquiring of the locality, but sometimes also to the necessity of an exceptional specimen to represent a well-distributed meteorite. Until next time…. The Accretion Desk welcomes all comments and feedback. [email protected] Meteorite Times Magazine 2012 Vacation Part One “They Came From Space” by Jim Tobin 5:30 AM Wednesday morning the alarm went off though I was already awake. It had been a restless night of sleep. I guess I was pretty excited about the trip we were about to take. Paul was picking me up at 6 AM I had just enough time to set all my stuff outside on my front porch. We were headed to Phoenix with a one-day stop in Quartzsite. There was a meteorite exhibition opening on Friday morning at the Challenger Center in Phoenix. It was being put together by Geoff Notkin. We expected it to be something fantastic. We arrived at Quartzsite about noon I guess. Drove around town for a few minutes checking out the RV parks. We found one that was pretty nice and headed off to get something to eat. After lunch we made the rounds of the rock stores and collectibles shops. I found some chunks of rock and I simply couldn’t live without. We bought some neat rotating specimen stands. They were solar powered and not very expensive. We got done walking around town which killed about three hours and it was time to head off to the RV park. We got all checked in and as we were leaving the office the woman there told us that the Italian restaurant just down the street was really excellent. Our intent had been to cook something for dinner in the RV. But fresh made restaurant pizza sounded pretty good to both of us. It was just a short walk from the RV so after working on the computer for a couple hours we headed over there. The pizza was just as delicious as we hoped for and since we were walking we both had a couple of beers. Our plan for the next day was to go just down the frontage road a little to a placer gold mining area and do some metal detecting. We would only be able to hunt there for a few hours before it got too hot. It would be over 100º F again. We were out on the hills a little before eight o’clock sweeping the metal detectors. It was a spectacularly bright beautiful day. There were mines, adits, and pits all over the area. All the region west of Quartzsite has been hunted for gold since before the Civil War. After a little while we stopped swinging the metal detectors, and just enjoyed the exploring. We did take a lot of pictures of course. As we hiked up around one little hill we saw something pretty surprising. In all the years of hiked in the desert neither of us had ever come upon a grave before. It was exciting, fascinating, interesting, and just a little tragic all at the same time. Guess we have a research project now to see if there’s anything we can learn about the grave. There have been three major phases of activity out there. The first, before the Civil War, the next around the turn of the last century, and the last the mid-1930s. To me the grave looks older than the 1930s but not as old as the Civil War. The wood that’s left of the cross is really weathered but doesn’t look to be 160 years old. We pressed on from the grave across a valley and up over one more hill which gave us a really good vantage point of the rest of the area. It was about 10:30 AM by then and time to head off to Phoenix. We usually watch movies on my laptop at night in a motorhome. The night before I realized I’d forgotten the power cord that plugs into my power supply. Not only would we not see movies I would not be doing any writing or work during the week. I called my wife and ask her to find it in my office. That was not very hard, it was sitting right next to the where everything for the trip had been piled. She sent me a picture from her phone just to be sure it was the correct cord. And it was the right cord. She took it down to FedEx Office and send it overnight to a location close to where we were going to stay. So by the time we got done hiking and exploring I was able to check and see that it had arrived. We made our way through Phoenix and over to Peoria. The FedEx Office was only one block off the freeway so I hopped out, got the package that was on hold, jumped back in the RV, in about 5 minutes we were back on the road. We settled into our RV Park, got all showered up and cooled off, we had a couple hours to relax before we headed for dinner. We had been hoping for about a week that Geoff would be able to get his exhibit all set up and could join us for dinner. As it turned out in the last couple hours of working at the museum the exhibit just all came together. Paul and I were really looking forward to dinner. Paul’s brother Tony and his girlfriend Tricia live near Phoenix and they had chosen the place for dinner. It was a wonderful buffet at one of the casinos. Geoff was bringing Tim Mallory a vice president at Fisher Labs, as happy Gold Bug 2 users we were interested in meeting him. Bob Holmes another good friend from Arizona was joining us as well. We had a super great group of people and expected to have a wonderful meal. We were not disappointed, we got to hear great stories told by Geoff and Tim. We got to catch up a little with Bob and it’s always great to see Tony and Tricia.