Friday 10 May 2013

Second meteorite from New Haven County, Connecticut.

A second meteorite has been found in New Haven County, Connecticut, in the front yard of a home in Waterbury, close to the Wolcott home that was struck by a meteorite on 19 April 2013. The precise time when the Waterbury meteorite fell is unknown, but Stefan Nicolescu of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, who has inspected both rocks, suggests that the two objects share a common origin.

The Waterbury meteorite. Yale Peabody Museum.

The Waterbury meteorite is about 10 cm long and weighs about 725 g. It is magnetic, and has a black fusion crust, similar to the Wolcott meteorite. Nicolescu believes the objects to have originated in the Lyrid Meteor shower, which would make them fragments of Comet C/1861 G1 Thatcher (named after the astronomer A. E. Thatcher, not the politician).


Follow Sciency Thoughts on Facebook.