Meteorite Times Magazine Contents by Editor Featured Articles Accretion Desk by Martin Horejsi Jim’s Fragments by Jim Tobin Meteorite Market Trends by Michael Blood Bob’s Findings by Robert Verish Micro Visions by John Kashuba Norm’s Tektite Teasers by Norm Lehrman Mr. Monning’s Collection by Anne Black IMCA Insights by The IMCA Team 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 2002–2014 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 Soko-Banja: LL4 Artillery from the Sky by Martin Horejsi The fall of the Soko-Banja, Serbia (Yugoslavia) chondrite Like cement from the heavens, the Soko-Banja chondrite crashed into history back in 1877. At approximately two in the afternoon on October 13, 1877, a thunderous noise described by witnesses as “Batteries of cannon firing briskly” was heard, followed by a “violent concussion of air.” Then rocks were strewn around the region. Other witnesses further away described the event as “two explosions like salvoes of artillery accompanied by a brilliant display of light.” The light was described as like that which “attends the bursting of shells.” Furthermore, a dense black smoke was observed quite high in the sky, and it “broke into three columns, and gradually changed to a white smoke.” As an LL4 Chondrite, it has well preserved and spherical chondrules such as this beauty sprouting from bow of this space ship. Another description of the fall described the noise as lasting “for some time, and then the sound resembled the firing of musketry. The air appeared to be shaken.” Following the explosive sound, stones fell to earth in an area described as “a mile and a half in length and a half a mile in breadth.” In other words, a classic ellipsoid strewn field. One stone, weighing 10 okas (~22.5 Austrian pounds), landed in front of a house burying itself “deep in the earth.” Another stone, this one weighing 30 okas landed at Scherbanowaz, near Rtanj Berg. Its mass of almost 70 Austrian pounds became the main mass of the fall now known as Soko-Banja. Peasants in the area who experienced the fall described one stone the size of a sack of flour that struck a rocky surface and “was dashed to fragments.” Additional descriptions of particular stones included one of 23 okas that fell in the village of Scherbanowaz, and “penetrated the soil to a depth of four feet.” Another stone of 15 okas fell “near the vineyard at Soko-Banja, and reached a depth of three feet.” Interesting dark inclusions abound in Soko-Banja. The contrast between the matrix and the inclusions was noted early in the published descriptions of these unusual stones from the sky. One piece of note is a fragment described as 2 okas in weight and “fell on a pear tree, and then descended to the ground. A man under the tree took it in his hand, and received the impression that the mass was still warm.” It was deduced that the explosion of the bolide occurred at 7000 meters above the earth due to the 25 second lag between light and sound. The interior of the meteorite was described as consisting of “spherules of various sizes, some brown, some yellow, cemented together by and ash-grey material, and presents the appearance of a trachytic lava.” The James DuPont Meteorite Collection let loose of this specimen back in April of 1995 where it entered the collection of Jim Schwade. A decade later it moved into my collection. As a historical witnessed fall, Soko-Banja is a classic case doing more to confirm the understanding about meteorites at the time rather than adding new information. However, 137 years later, Soko-Banja is an important place holder in many institutions due to is relatively rare class of LL4, and by the collection of diverse but converging perspectives about its fall. Until next time… Meteorite Times Magazine The 2014 Tucson Gem and Mineral Show Report by James Tobin This is a large oriented Chelyabinsk meteorite. Well another Tucson Gem and Mineral Show has come and gone. And I will not make you wait until the end for what I thought about this one. I think we did more good work as a business and had more fun and spent more great time with friends then ever before. I had a little nervousness about the trip because we were leaving for Tucson a couple days later than we usually do. But, those feeling proved to be unfounded as there was material for us to buy and we found almost everything that we had wanted to get. As for me I went without a list really except I wanted some tiny Chelyabinsk baby meteorites. There will be a lot of Chelyabinsk pictures in this article I made sure to get some since no one knows how much there will be in the future. Here are a couple pictures of tiny oriented Chelyabinsk meteorites balanced on the head of a pin. Our plane landed at about 3 pm Tucson time. Which gave us enough time to run to our hotel and check in after getting the rental car and head back down to the Tucson City Center Hotel and spend a little time before going the few blocks to El Charro Restaurant for the yearly IMCA dinner. I found a few baby Chelyabinsk right off that were nice. I would later find some even smaller Chelyabinsk and I would buy about 60 of those. I brought back the lowest weight of meteorites I have in many years but I am sure I brought back the highest number of individual stones ever. New acquisitions for my collection need to have a higher entertainment factor than they did in the past. And I love nothing more than putting tiny stones under the digital microscope and studying them in closeup detail. Or taking a big chunk of time to photograph them with my macro setup. Guess I got hooked on tiny meteorites after Holbrook two years ago. We had a great time at the IMCA dinner. We ate with Norm and Cookie Lehrman and Bob and Moni Verish were just a chair away. We got to see a good number of other friends. The food was as always very good but it really is the camaraderie that makes this event so great. I caught up on family activities and the year’s gardening with Norm and Cookie. I had planted a vegetable garden and built a greenhouse since last year and they grow a lot of their own vegetables too. Bob was as always excited about the most recent meteorites he had recovered. He and Moni were both pretty thrilled with the pictures Paul and I have gotten of the night sky. They have been with us many times when we had scopes and enjoyed hours of stargazing with us after hunting meteorites all day. It started to rain about 9 pm and we were all in the patio area so Paul and I called it a night; said our goodbyes and headed to the hotel. The next day would begin our work. Friday morning came slowly for me after a long night of tossing and turning with little sleep. We had our traditional breakfast at the Denny’s near the hotel and headed to our first stop; a visit with Mike Miller at the Ramada. As always his room sparkled with beautifully etched irons. We chatted a while and got slices of a few meteorites. We made our way around the corner to Blaine Reed’s room. As always he was sitting on the bed talking to a couple customers. We looked around chatted with him and I found a piece of Saratov that he had. I have a nice slice of Saratov already but I have been looking for a more chunky piece for a while that I can extract the chondrules from. If you handle Saratov at all it will start to shed chondrules. But I wanted to not get chondrules that were cut on one edge. That is what I would get too many of with the piece I already had. The piece Blaine had was much thicker and would give me masses of chondrules only a fraction of which would be nicked by a diamond blade. By the time I got home the piece already had dozens of chondrules in the plastic baggie ready to pick out with tweezers.