Meteorites, messengers from other planets

Stuart Atkinson takes a look at five of the most famous 'celebrity meteorites'

- Stuart Atkinson

We would be amazed if we could look up at the night sky and see all the rocks flying through space around us. Our Solar System contains billions of them, all orbiting the Sun-like miniature worlds. Occasionally, Earth crosses paths with one of these meteoroids and it burns up in our atmosphere as a meteor or shooting star. But some survive their fiery passage and land on the ground as a charred rock. Most of these are never found, but a few are seen to fall and then are recovered to be studied by scientists. All these meteorites are fascinating, but some are more valued by scientists and collectors. One might even say they are 'celebrity meteorites'. Here, we look at five of these most famous space rocks.

The Winchcombe meteorite

Late on the evening of 28 February 2021, thousands of people across the UK and northern Europe saw a bright fireball streaking across the sky, and some of them heard sonic booms. The fireball was also recorded by the cameras of the UK Fireball Alliance (www.ukfall.org.uk), a network of cameras scattered across the UK. By combining the eyewitness reports and analysing the survey images, experts calculated that meteorites may have landed in, or near, the Gloucestershire village of Winchcombe. The next day a hunt began, and before too long dark, fragile rocks were spotted in the grass. One family found a pile of the rocks on their driveway, surrounded by black powder - yet more pieces of what would become known as the 'Winchcombe meteorite'. A rare, carbonaceous chondrite-type rock, it was the first meteorite to be recovered in the UK in 30 years.