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Met Name

Met Type

Thin Sections

9.61 grams.   Ureilite-an

TKW 3.95 kg.

Pre-Earth-encounter size estimated to be 4.1 meters in diameter and 80,000 kilograms.

Observed approach: 6 October 2008

Observed fall: 7 October 2008

First found: 6 December 2008, Nahr an Nil, Nubian Desert, Sudan.

Many stones from this fall have been classified, with a wide variety of results - Ureilite, polymict, anomalous; bencubbin; EH 4/5; and EL 3.

From the MetBul:

On October 6, 2008, a small asteroid called 2008 TC3 was discovered by the automated Catalina Sky Survey 1.5 m telescope at Mount Lemmon, Tucson, Arizona, and found to be on a collision course with Earth. Numerous astronomical observatories followed the object until it entered the Earth’s umbra at Oct. 7.076 UTC the next day. The astrometric position of 295 observations of 2008 TC3 over the period Oct. 6.278 to Oct. 7.063 was used to calculate the approach trajectory over the impact location in northern Sudan. The object exploded at a high ~37 km altitude over the Nubian Desert, and as a result the meteorites are spread over a large area. A search was organized by the University of Khartoum on Dec. 2–9, led by P. Jenniskens (SETI Institute) and M. H. Shaddad (Khartoum).

       

Anne writes:

Almahata Sitta is a unique meteorite.

First, the exact time and site of impact were known while the meteor was still in space thanks to the sharp eyes of Richard Kowalski, with the Catalina Sky Survey, who spotted it with the telescope of Mount Lemmon near Tucson, Arizona.

Then Siegfried Haberer from Germany, who was lucky enough to be able to bring some fragments back from Sudan, noticed those fragments did not all look alike. He took them all to Professor Addi Bishoff, with the University of Munster, who decided that every fragment would have to be analyzed and classified individually. Good idea because many different types of meteorites were then found within that one Fall. There were many different types of ureilites, of Enstatites, even one small Bencubbinite, and this is the latest discovery, an extremely rare Trachyandesite.

Only 2 small individual pieces of Trachyandesite were found -this one and another used for study. For more information about this rare type of meteorite here is a paper published by the National Academy of Sciences.

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