[meteorite-list] Dutch scientists fete rare meteorite find

From: Marco Langbroek <marco_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2017 17:43:11 +0200
Message-ID: <8c32aa52-a160-2ae6-91f0-3e5c85072dd1_at_langbroek.org>

Hi all,

Some more details on this one: the meteorite in question is an Ordinary
Chondrite, an L6, which is provisionally named Broek in Waterland (this name
still has to be approved, so is not official yet). The classification was done
by Leo Kriegsman and me at Naturalis (the Dutch National Museum of Natural
History) in Leiden.

It is a witnessed fall that happened in the very early local evening of January
11th, 16:09 UT (17:09 local time, sun only 3 degrees below the horizon - too
early for our all-sky network unfortunately). There are many visual reports but
only one video so far, from a car dashcam from Belgium some 165 km distant from
the fall site, which shows the fireball going down almost vertically. The
azimuth of the fireball on that video matches the find locality well. Weather
radar and military flight radar have been checked, but nothing registered.

The stone weighs 530 grams and is fully fusion crust covered. It impacted on the
roof of a garden shed near the village of Broek in Waterland, which is in a
rural area just north of Amsterdam. The owners of the shed discovered it the
next day when they saw roofing tile sherds lying around, then discovered the
hole in the roof and the stone lodged in it. It took some 3 weeks before the
news of this reached us, through Niek de Kort of the Royal Dutch Astronomy
Association who was contacted by the finders. Leo and me then visited the fall
locality on February 3 and identified it as a meteorite.

There is only one stone: we have meticulously searched a large area around the
impact location with a team of volunteers in the weeks afterwards, but found
nothing. Part of the area is a peat swamp and there is a lot of open water there
("Waterland" in Dutch translates the same in English, and there is a reason the
village is named thus...).

It is only the 6th preserved meteorite of our small country in 177 years time.

cheers,

- Marco

----
Dr Marco Langbroek
e-mail:  meteorieten at langbroek.org
Twitter: _at_Marco_Langbroek
----

Received on Tue 27 Jun 2017 11:43:11 AM PDT