Jikharra 001。灶神星 - 57 g

In 2022, people who frequently drive their cars through a valley in Northeastern Libya thought that some of the black stones present in the area could be meteorites. They were analyzed and determined to be a melt breccia eucrite meteorite. Numerous fragments where then reportedly found at coordinates 29°58’08.2’’ N, 21°52’05.0’’ E, totaling more that 3 tons.

This is the largest total known weight of any eucrite meteorite recorded to date and has been one of the latest sensations in the meteorite community around the world.

Classification: HED achondrite (Eucrite, melt breccia) Physical characteristics: Many brownish fragments some of which with small patches of fusion crust. Petrography: Achondritic melt breccia composed of several cm-sized lithic clasts set in abundant recrystallized shock melt. Lithic clasts consist of calcic plagioclase and aggregates of fine-grained, 30-70 µm sized pigeonite crystals displaying patchy compositional zoning. The melt matrix is composed of recrystallized pigeonite.

Eucrites are a rare type of meteorite that comes from Asteroid Vesta. It is in the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter. It orbits the Sun with a period of 3.6 Earth years and has a diameter of 525 kilometres. A great impact occurred in the South hemisphere of Vesta less than 1 billion years ago, ejecting rocks from the asteroid into space. Eventually some of these rocks fell on Earth. Due to the lack of chondrules in this type of meteorites, they are called achondrites in contraposition to chondrites.

Picture of Asteroid Vesta is courtesy of NASA.

Certificate of authenticity included. IMCA 5591.

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