Can anyone help me find out if this is a meteorite?
Possible meteorite?
- Thread starter Josephef
- Start date
Red-Coat
Gold Member
Welcome to the forum.
From the pictures, it doesn't exhibit any particular features that would identify it as a meteorite. Where was it found, is it magnetic (if so, how strongly), and what kind of streak does it leave on the unglazed back of a porcelain tile?
From the pictures, it doesn't exhibit any particular features that would identify it as a meteorite. Where was it found, is it magnetic (if so, how strongly), and what kind of streak does it leave on the unglazed back of a porcelain tile?
Red-Coat
Gold Member
Once you’ve established that a specimen is not magnetic, it is then confined to a much smaller group of meteorite possibilities within the overall group. Some low metal chondrites including carbonaceous chondrites, and some achondrites. That considerably chops down the possibility of it being a meteorite and I don’t see anything about your specimen which is consistent with those much less common possibilities.
A meteorite generally won't give you a streak. Usually it will skid off the tile and at best leave a weak slightly dirty streak. A carbonaceous chondrite might give you a black-grey streak but for sure what I see in the pictures is not one of those. Some identification sites will say that many stony meteorites will give you a pale brown streak, but that’s misleading. Maybe if you vigorously rubbed it to and fro, but that’s not how a streak test should be performed… and you need to blow away any dust to look at the actual steak, not the dust created.
We can be sure that it’s not hematite, which streaks a distinctive red or red-brown. Limonite and goethite streak yellow or yellowish-brown but those are not the only terrestrial possibilities. The fact that it’s not magnetic does not rule out iron-bearing earth minerals. Contrary to popular belief only magnetite is magnetic and, if other iron minerals are magnetic, it’s because they are commonly associated with small amounts of magnetite as a secondary mineral.
A meteorite generally won't give you a streak. Usually it will skid off the tile and at best leave a weak slightly dirty streak. A carbonaceous chondrite might give you a black-grey streak but for sure what I see in the pictures is not one of those. Some identification sites will say that many stony meteorites will give you a pale brown streak, but that’s misleading. Maybe if you vigorously rubbed it to and fro, but that’s not how a streak test should be performed… and you need to blow away any dust to look at the actual steak, not the dust created.
We can be sure that it’s not hematite, which streaks a distinctive red or red-brown. Limonite and goethite streak yellow or yellowish-brown but those are not the only terrestrial possibilities. The fact that it’s not magnetic does not rule out iron-bearing earth minerals. Contrary to popular belief only magnetite is magnetic and, if other iron minerals are magnetic, it’s because they are commonly associated with small amounts of magnetite as a secondary mineral.
Red-Coat
Gold Member
Maybe... of the interior in extreme close-up. But there comes a point where no amount of pictures will help further and you then need to resort to professional testing of the specimen itself. Usually, we only bother with this when the specimen passes muster from initial observations of its appearance and basic properties. So far, it hasn't.
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