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Thanks for visiting my website, updated regularly since May 1997
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A new jewel from the Sahara, NWA 8535: The first dunitic angrite
Is this a piece of "Maia", mother of Hermes (Mercury), or possibly a piece of "Theia", mother of Selene (the Moon goddess)? read more >>
Photo courtesy of Habib Najiclick on photo for a magnified view
Was it launched from Mercury?
See Indicators of a Mercurian Meteorite
Congratulations Stefan Ralew for discovering the van Gogh of meteorites!
NWA 7325
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Perhaps you have a meteorite sample from Uranus or Neptune...
read more >>
Pluto Walk, Lowell Observatory
Flagstaff, Arizona
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This photo was taken September 1990 in Flagstaff, Arizona during a chance meeting between Doug Hollis and myself with Clyde Tombaugh and his wife Patricia. They happened to be visiting the observatory, from which he discovered the ninth planet Pluto, to make their first stroll together down the newly constructed Pluto Walk. The photo was shared with Clyde and received his signature in May 1992.
Congratulations Clyde Tombaugh on your historic visit to Pluto!
Link to high-resolution image https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/crop_p_color2_enhanced_release.png
Link to high-resolution image https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/nh-charon-neutral-bright-release.jpg
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft captured the above high-resolution enhanced color images of Pluto and Charon on July 14, 2015. The Pluto and Charon images resolve details as small as 0.8 miles and 1.8 miles, respectively. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.
The image below depicts every know planet in the solar system under 10,000 km in diameter (shown to scale), based on the geophysical definition of a planet proposed by Runyon et al., 48th LPSC, #1448 (2017). The known planets currently number ~110.
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HAPPY 4,568,300,000th BIRTHDAY TO THE SOLAR SYSTEM!
(Burkhardt et al., 2008)
Our Current Solar System
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My thanks to the many dedicated investigators whose ongoing research provides the basis for this website. Some of the sources utilized for this website are not peer-reviewed.
Thanks to Joe who introduced his six-year-old brother to meteoritics when he revealed the "impact pit" in the backyard, complete with a melted, bubbly "meteorite" (slag) at the bottom.