Allende
Collection:
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Microscope
Click the microscope button to view a thin section for this sample.
Microscope

Fact sheet

Allende

Location: The village of Pueblito de Allende, Chihuahua, Mexico
Co-ordinates:  26°58'N, 105°19'W.
Find or Fall: Fall
Date:  February 8, 1969, 7:05 GMT.
Recovered weight: two metric tons scattered over an area of 48 km x 7 km
Group: Carbonaceous Chondrite
Type:III
Allende is often called the "best studied meteorite in history". It contains microscopic diamonds with unusual isotopic signatures that point to an extrasolar origin. These interstellar grains are older than the Solar System and may have been produced by a nearby supernova. They represent some of the oldest matter known to man and are estimated to be 4.567 billion years old....and amazingly they are 30 million years older than the Earth.
Further details of this meteorite are provided by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History:
http://www.mnh.si.edu/onehundredyears/featured_objects/AllendeMeteorite....
See also
Jarosewich et al. (1987) The Allende meteorite reference sample, publ. Smithsonian Institution Press, 49pp.

Classification: http://www.open.ac.uk/earth-research/tindle/AGT/AGT_Home_2010/MeteoriteClass-2.html

Additional images
  • Allende meteorite
Map
26.966, -105.316
About this collection

'Space Eyeful: A Virtual Space Microscope'

This collection presents digitised microscope images of rare and usually inaccessible extraterrestrial meteorite samples. The project was funded by the EUROPLANET consortium and is a collaboration between The Open University; The Natural History Museum, London; The Natural History Museum, Vienna; and NASA’s Meteorite Working Group (MWG).

Meteorites fall on the Earth every year, bringing with them information on the make-up of the solar system including the Moon, Mars and asteroids.

Image credit: The Alamat meteorite in situ, courtesy of Dr Svend Buhl, Meteorite Recon

Sample details

Type
meteorite
Category
carbonaceous chondrite
Category guide  
Category Guide
Title
Refers to any word or phrase that appears in the individual rock names. Names are generally descriptive; they allow users to search for broad terms like ‘granite’ as well as more specific names such as ‘breccia’. However, the adjacent descriptions of the specimens captures a wider range of general words and phrases and is a more powerful search tool.
Description
Refers to any word or phrase that appears anywhere in the descriptions of the specimens
Accessory minerals
Minerals that occur in very low abundance in a rock. They are usually not visible with the naked eye and contribute perhapssver, they often dominate the rare elements such as platinum group metals.
Rock-forming minerals
Minerals that make up the bulk of all rock samples and are also the ones used in rock classi?cation.
Timescale
Selecting one or more period, for example 'Jurassic'.
Theme
A term used to group together related samples that are not already gathered into a single Collection. For instance, there is a ‘SW England granites’ theme that includes such rock types as granite, hydrothermal breccia, skarn and vein samples.
Category
A general term used to label a rock sample. It is a useful way of grouping similar samples throughout a collection. Category names are often, but not exclusively, common rock names (e.g. granite, basalt, dolerite, gabbro, greisen, skarn, gneiss, amphibolite, limestone, sandstone).
Owner
The owner of the sample that appears in the collection. For example, NASA owns all the samples that appear in the Moon Rocks collection
We would like to thank the following for the use of this sample: