Erevan (meteorite)
Erevan is a stone meteorite weighing 107.2 grams that was found in Armenia and is one of the rare Howardites .
history
The meteorite fell in an area a few kilometers north of the Armenian capital Yerevan in 1911 or 1912 and was found a short time later.
Since 1898 there was a law in the Russian Empire that all meteorites found were state property, had to be handed over to a museum and a reward would be paid out to the bearer by the Russian Academy of Sciences . In the Soviet Union , the law was not adopted, but it was retained that a reward was given for meteorite submissions through the Academy of Sciences of the USSR . In the entire period from 1898 to 1992 there were only three cases in which the finders waived the reward on principle: Alexander Fjodorow , a geographer who led an expedition to the Primorye region to the Boguslavka meteorite in 1916 , and Pyotr Drawert , a poet and Professor of Omsk University , who found five meteorites in Siberia in the 1930s, and WA Petrosian, an engineer who delivered the Erevan meteorite in 1975.
So far, two meteorites found in Armenian territory have been given a proper name. After the H6 chondrite Kulp , which fell in the north-east of the country in 1906, Erevan is the second named object. There are 15 other Howardite finds worldwide.
The Academy of Sciences of the USSR published in 1978 a study of the Erevan meteorite with a microscopic and macroscopic analysis, a chemical analysis and a determination of the noble gases. The age of the meteorite was determined to be 22 million years, at least it seems to have been exposed to cosmic rays for that long.
Appearance and classification
Howardites are believed to be fragments of the surface of the asteroid (4) Vesta .
Erevan is mainly a mixture of pigeonite - plagioclases with orthopyroxenes , like other Howardites. In addition, you can find olivines and unusual clasts with carbon , glass and basalt and - rather untypical for Howardites - carbonates and phyllosilicates . Erevan and the Jodzie meteorite found in Lithuania are the two smallest Howardites found, but are among the four Howardites with the greatest mineralogical diversity.
The following minerals and varieties were found in the meteorite:
- Albite , Na [AlSi 3 O 8 ]
- Anorthite , CaAl 2 Si 2 O 8
- Bytownite , (Ca, Na) [Al (Al, Si) Si 2 O 8 ]
- Augite , (Ca, Na) (Mg, Fe 2+ , Al, Fe 3+ , Ti) [(Si, Al) 2 O 6 ]
- Barringerite , (Fe, Ni) 2 P
- Calcite , CaCO 3
- Chromite , Fe 2+ Cr 3+ 2 O 4
- Cronsteditite , Fe 2+ 2 Fe 3+ ((Si, Fe 3+ ) 2 O 5 ) (OH) 4
- Dolomite , CaMg (CO 3 ) 2
- Forsterite , Mg 2 SiO 4
- Ilmenite , Fe 2+ TiO 3
- solid iron , Fe
- Kamacite , (Fe, Ni)
- Olivine , (Mg, Fe 2+ ) 2 SiO 4
- Pigeonite , (Mg, Fe 2+ , Ca) (Mg, Fe 2+ ) Si 2 O 6
- Silicon dioxide
- Tochilinite , Fe 2+ 5–6 (Mg, Fe 2+ ) 5 S 6 (OH) 10
- Troilit , FeS
See also
Web links
- Mineral Atlas : Yerevan Meteorite, Yerevan (Yerevan), Armenia
- Erevan in the Meteorological Bulletin Database
- Photo of the meteorite in the Encyclopedia of Meteorites
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d MinDat - Erevan meteorite (English).
- ↑ Gerald Joseph Home McCall, Alan John Bowden, Richard John Howarth (eds.): The History of Meteoritics and Key Meteorite Collections: Fireballs, Falls and Finds (= Geological Society Special Publication. 256). Geological Society, London 2006, ISBN 1-86239-194-7 , pp. 225 f. (English, sp.lyellcollection.org ).
- ↑ LG Kvasha, A. Ia. Skripnik, MI Diakonova, V. Ia. Kharitonova, LK Levskii: The Erevan meteorite. In: Meteoritika. Volume 37, 1978, ISSN 0369-2507 , pp. 80-86, 257-260 (Russian adsabs.harvard.edu ).
Coordinates: 40 ° 18 ′ 0 ″ N , 44 ° 30 ′ 0 ″ E