Beddgelert
Collection:
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Fact sheet

Beddgelert

In the early hours of September 21st 1949 many people in North Wales and Cheshire saw a brilliant light in the sky and heard dull explosions. It was the prelude to the fall of the Beddgelert meteorite. The next morning the wife of the owner of the Prince Llewelyn Hotel found a hole in the roof and a small cricket ball object on the floor - the meteorite. It is an ordinary chondrite weighing 794 gms. 

Beddgelert is a village near Blaenau Ffestiniog in North Wales.

The Beddgelert meteorite is classified as an H5 chondritic meteorite meaning it has a high iron content (12-21%) and distinct chondrules (olivine and pyroxene mainly). Chondrules are thought to have formed from the condensation of hot gases in the solar system around 4.6 billion years ago. In the hand specimen these chondrules are clearly visible.


See also:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meteor/metbull.php?code=4993

Specimen: BM1949,259

Map
53.012511, -4.102364
Description:
Beddgelert, North Wales
Precision:
Good
About this collection

This Collection consists of meteorites that have fallen in Great Britain and Ireland and which are now preserved in museum collections. We have also included samples of the two known meteorite impact deposits in the UK.

The Natural History Museum in London offers more information about meteorites and meteorite categories; there is more information about its meteorite collections here.

Sample details

Type
meteorite
Category
H5
Rock-forming mineral
olivine
pyroxene
Category guide  
Category Guide
Title
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Description
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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
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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: