[meteorite-list] Biggest West heads north

From: Darren Garrison <cynapse_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 10:21:16 -0500
Message-ID: <5tl6u4d2huheb39mascn7vh36k3goou975_at_4ax.com>

Hope they don't drop a car on it:

http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/story/1136629.html


Hill County residents find largest rock yet from local meteorite shower

http://www.wacotrib.com/news/content/news/stories/2009/04/12/04122009wacmeteorite.html

By Ken SuryTribune-Herald staff writer

Sunday, April 12, 2009

MENLOW ? The biggest piece discovered from the Feb. 15 meteor that broke apart
near West now sits in a meteorite museum in Kansas, its owner happy to have
acquired the space rock as well as the trust of the Hill County couple who found
it and sold it to him.

L.B. and Polly Etter were in church the Sunday morning when the fireball cut
across the Texas skies. They didn?t hear the accompanying sonic boom that
rattled houses around West. It was 11 days after the fall that L.B. Etter was
driving his tractor along his farmland in Menlow, just west of Interstate 35 and
Abbott, when he spotted something out of the ordinary.

?I?ve cut and bailed this patch of hay for years, so I knew that was something
that wasn?t supposed to be there,? the 77-year-old farmer and rancher said.

Etter had followed the news reports about the meteorite finds near West, but
that was about seven to eight miles southeast ?as the crow flies? from his
place. Still, he kept the nearly 4-pound stony meteorite, dumping it in the back
of his pickup to go on a fertilizer run to West.

Women working at the fertilizer plant remarked that it was indeed a meteorite,
and when L.B. returned home, his wife, Polly, wrapped it up in a towel for
safekeeping.

L.B. Etter then called some of the meteorite hunters and collectors who had
advertisements in the West News seeking to buy pieces.

Etter?s find ? at 1,700 grams ? is about 200 grams heavier than the next-largest
rock that was purchased by meteorite hunter Mike Farmer of Tucson, Ariz. Farmer
was among about 10 people initially interested in the chondrite. But it wasn?t
until last week when L.B. and Polly Etter agreed to sell it to Kansas meteorite
museum owner Don Stimpson for an undisclosed price.

Farmer earlier had purchased his slightly smaller meteorite ? he was told it was
found near Aquilla ? for more than $10,000, though he also declined to provide
an exact figure. Stimpson said he knows of one other large piece from the ?main
mass? that another meteorite hunter has purchased.

While all of the meteorite hunters were pleasant to deal with, Stimpson just
stood out, L.B. Etter said.

?He just seemed to be more down-to-Earth to me,? he said.

Stimpson and his wife, Sheila Knepper, own the Kansas Meteorite Museum and
Nature Center in southern Kansas. The museum?s claim to fame is that it houses
the largest display of meteorites from a prehistoric fall near the now-defunct
town of Brenham, Kan. The Brenham fall has the rarest of meteorites, a
stony-iron mix called a pallasite.

Even though the West meteorite, as it is being called, is a chondrite, which is
the most common type of stony meteorite, Stimpson said he is thrilled to have it
because it?s something new for his museum.

?It?s a nice, pristine sample,? said Stimpson, adding that though it was found
11 days after the fall, no rain had fallen on it and it had not weathered. The
pallasite fragments of the Brenham meteorite were dug out of the ground and
often have significant rust, he noted.

?A few months ago this rock was thousands of miles in space, farther away than
the moon, and now here it is, just as it was found on the ground, with a surface
of black, melted rock and sculpted dimples forged in a fireball,? said Stimpson,
who was a biophysicist in Chicago before his interest in meteorites became a
full-blown passion and second career.

The largest pieces, like the Etters? find in Menlow, will be west of I-35,
Stimpson said. When a meteorite breaks up and scatters pieces across an
oval-shaped ?strewn field,? the smallest pieces land first. The bigger fragments
with greater mass are at the end of the field. Birome appears to be the front
end of the fall with pea- and pecan-sized fragments, Stimpson said, with Menlow
at the back of the strewn field.

Large pieces like the Etters? rock could be acres apart from each other,
Stimpson said. For now, the Etters? chondrite has the distinction of being the
largest from the West fall. It is on display in the Kansas museum, but Stimpson
said he hopes to bring it back to West for an exhibition with other West
meteorite fragments at a future date.

He?s been in initial talks, but nothing is finalized.

Stimpson expects there will be more discoveries, but the Etters haven?t heard of
anyone else in their area finding meteorites. Stimpson admitted that to most
people, it just looks like a black rock.

?Some large pieces may be found, but with the vegetation starting to grow,
searching will be difficult, and rusting will begin, but the material is still
valuable and worth collecting,? Stimpson said. ?More specimens will probably be
found during fall planting.?

L.B. Etter said he?ll be scanning his property a little more closely in the days
to come.

?If I see a black rock now, I?ll stop and look at it,? he said.
Received on Mon 13 Apr 2009 11:21:16 AM PDT