* Astronomy

Fell 2003 November 2, 17:00 IST
Ordinary Chondrite (H4)
A single stone weighing 16.82 kg accompanied by a thundering sound fell at Kasauli village (29° 35' N: 77° 35' E), Muuzaffarnagar district, Uttar Pradesh, India creating an oval shaped crater. The fall was witnessed by villagers of Kasauli. The meteorite was retrieved by the Geological Survey of India (GSI). The single mass of Kasauli meteorite is almost an oriented one and has a plano-convex turtle-back shape with a truncated ellipsoidal outline. The crust is greyish in colour, netted in nature. A few visible chondrules are distinct on the surface. Minute shiny metallic knobs are observed on the surface of the meteorite. Classification (B.K.Chattopadhyay and A.P.Thapliyal, GSI): the meteorite is essentially composed of olivine, pyroxene, abundant Fe-Ni metal, troilite and devitrified glass. Olivine occurs in higher abundance than pyroxene. A variety of well defined chondrules of varying shape and sizes (from 0.1 mm to 0.6 mm) are present. The chondrule-matrix boundary is sharp. The matrix is fine-grained recrystallised.
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