[meteorite-list] Met Bulletin Updates - 2 NWA's and a Nova, and a Question regarding Nomenclature

From: Jeff Grossman <jngrossman_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2012 07:46:02 -0400
Message-ID: <4F9540FA.2030504_at_gmail.com>

The way it works is that meteorites are named based on how much
certainty we have about where they come from. When we think the
coordinates are accurate, we can name them after very local features.
For things like NWA and Sahara meteorites, we have some confidence that
they come from northwest Africa and the Sahara in general, but not much
more than that. The hallmark of the Nova series is that we don't have
any good information about where they were found, or, in some of the
early ones, we thought that information was false.

Nova 011 simply turned up in a market in Russia.There is no accompanying
find story. Perhaps it's from Russia, perhaps it's an NWA, who knows.
If there was some kind of find story indicating a local origin, we might
have named it differently, perhaps South Russia or something like that.

Jeff

On 4/20/2012 12:20 PM, Michael Gilmer wrote:
> Greetings Bulletin Geeks,
>
> There are 3 new approvals today. Two NWA's - a CK5 and L5. And one
> new "Nova" find - an iron from Russia.
>
> Question - it has been my understanding that Nova names are reserved
> for those meteorites with dubious location data. So, why is it that
> many of the Labenne finds have not been renamed as Nova finds? And
> this new Russian iron seems to have find data similar to the majority
> of NWA's, so why aren't more NWA's classified as Novas? Is it because
> there are just too many NWA's?
>
> http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meteor/metbull.php?sea=&sfor=names&ants=&falls=&valids=&stype=contains&lrec=50&map=ge&browse=&country=All&srt=name&categ=All&mblist=All&rect=&phot=&snew=1&pnt=Normal%20table&dr=&page=0
>
> Best regards,
>
> MikeG
>
Received on Mon 23 Apr 2012 07:46:02 AM PDT