Fact sheet
Location: Czech Republic
Co-ordinates: 49° 17'N, 15° 34'E.
Find or Fall: Fall
Date: 1808
Recovered weight: 52 kg
Group: Eucrite
Type: Monomict Breccia
The Stannern meteorite is a melted stony meteorite, or achondrite (sub-group: eucrite). It has the mineralogy similar to a terrestrial basalt (igneous rock formed from cooling lava), made up of the silicate minerals pyroxene and plagioclase feldspar. Stannern is one of a group of meteorites that is thought to come from the asteroid 4 Vesta.
View an object movie of this meteorite:
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/virtual-wonders/vrmeteorite2.html
Classification: http://www.open.ac.uk/earth-research/tindle/AGT/AGT_Home_2010/MeteoriteClass-2.html
'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