Patos de Minas (meteorite)
Patos de Minas is an iron meteorite discovered in 1925 in the collection of the Escola de Minas Ouro Preto . It was a heavily oxidized fragment weighing 18.4 g, which had been archived without specifying a location. The meteorite is already mentioned in the catalog of the British Museum and in Buchwald's "Handbook of Iron Meteorites", where it is listed under the name "Patos de Minas" with the addition "( octahedrite )" in order to identify it from the "Patos de Minas ( hexahedrite ) "to distinguish.
In 2005, while plowing on the grounds of the Santa Fé Hacienda near Patos de Minas, at a depth of 30 cm , Paulo Garcia discovered an iron mass measuring 54 x 33 x 22 cm, which was excavated about a year later (correspondence Dr. Svend Buhl / Paulo Garcia) . The weight of the heavily weathered meteorite was approx. 198 kg. As part of the classification of the meteorite at the Institute for Geophysics of the University of California, the pairing of the newly discovered mass, which was initially distributed under the field name "Santa Fé Hacienda", with the Patos de Minas material was determined. A correct location could now be assigned to the original material.
Patos de Minas is a medium octahedrite the IAB complex with irregularly constructed kamazite or slats and a bandwidth of 1.1 ± 0.2 mm (max. 2.4 mm). Terrestrial corrosion has severely affected the bark area down to a depth of 5 cm due to the formation of limonite. Only the core material therefore shows a good expression of the Widmannstatt pattern . The meteorite contains many troilite inclusions. A further classification into the subgroups of the IAB complex has not been made.
An intensive search with metal detectors in 2005, 2006 and 2007 in a radius of up to 6 km from where the 198 kg mass was found did not reveal any further meteorites.
literature
- Vagn Fabritius Buchwald: Handbook of Iron Meteorites, Their History, Distribution, Composition, and Structure. University of California Press, 1975. ISBN 978-0520029347