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Monahans, et al.

Hello All,

I had a wonderful talk with Dr. Brian Mason at the Smithsonian last week.
During our discussion, the topic of the Monahans, Texas came up. Although
we discussed many of the things that have been brought up in recent posts
on this List, he also mentioned something regarding the unique situation of
an anticipated meteorite fall.

In January 1970, the Smithsonian's Prairie Network that began in 1964
recorded the Lost City meteorite's fall on film. The Prairie Network
"consisted of 16 stations centered on southeastern Nebraska... It extended
300 miles in all directions. The cameras operated for 10 years. In that
time hundreds of fireballs were photographed, but only one yielded a
meteorite," (RFS 2, p345-6).

It was the study of photographs such as Lost City's fall that confirmed
that many meteorites originated in the Asteroid Belt. Today, the belief
that meteorites originate in the Asteroid Belt is something most people
believe to be a universal truth of our solar system.

Dr. Mason explained to me that even though all the work to photograph the
fall was done by the Smithsonian, the issue of where a meteorite could fall
was of great concern. The scientist's work could be in vain if the
meteorite fell on the private property of an unhelpful or greedy landowner.

A large risk of time and money was taken by those involved with the Prairie
Network, but now we all reap the benefits of the research, photographs and
specimens. Even 28 years later, we can see the mostly intact masses on
display in a national museum. In fact, the earlier find in Monahans (1938)
is also on display at the Smithsonian.

In the big picture, disputes such as Monahans represent the overall nature
of collecting artifacts. Good decisions will be made, as will bad ones. I
was excited about the Noblesville chondrite becoming available to
collectors, but mostly for selfish reasons.  I had been following the
events up to its sale (as I chronicled in my Nov 1997 article about Marlin
Cilz in Meteorite!).  It was oriented and what I believe to be of a most
unique shape. However, now the science of its shape is limited to the few
photographs taken of it, and given its low mass, few specimens reside in
collections. Although I was happy to get a slice of it, I was somewhat
disheartened to think that the opening meteorite in the new NASA meteorite
teaching curriculum is not intact and available for viewing anywhere in the
world.

I believe that since we are working with valuable materials (scientific and
monetary), if we must move slow and make decisions over a long period of
time, well then more power to us.

Just my thoughts.

Martin
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