BAN #435: Meteorites mailed, Meteorites for auction, Asteroid named for Indigenous Americans

[Hubble image of NGC 3603. Credit: NASA, ESA, R. O'Connell (UVa), F. Paresce (NIA, Bologna, Italy), E. Young (USRA/Ames Research Center), the WFC3 Science Oversight Committee, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)]

Subscribers, like meteorites, are highly valued by me and likely also difficult to dust

About this newsletter

Ooo, meta

Some good news: I finally was able to send out all the meteorites to the lottery winners!

Waaaay back in Issue 419 I announced I’d be giving away 20 small meteorites; 10 each to free and paid subscribers. Well, those were just put into the mail and by now many of you who won should have received them.

My apologies for taking so long to get them posted; I knew from previous giveaways that there would be a few people who wouldn’t respond to my email telling them they’d won, so I built in a one-week waiting period to give people a chance. But a whole bunch of people never replied, so I sent out a second round of emails. Then a few still didn’t answer… it went four rounds. Yikes. So that added a month to the time it took to mail them all out. Next time I’ll significantly shorten that response time.

[I asked my wife to get a pic of me holding the bag of envelopes ready to mail, but then somebody decided to horn in on the shot. Credit: Phil Plait]

Anyway, congrats to all of you who got one, and I hope you enjoy them. As for the rest of y’all, I want to do more things like giveaways and such but I’m not sure exactly what to do. I need astronomy- and/or science-adjacent companies to partner with me. Maybe I’ll ping a few.

Blog Jam

What I’ve recently written on the blog, ICYMI

[Yup, that’s a donut on the Moon. From Friday’s article. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser/spaceengine.org]

Monday 6 June, 2022:  Astronomers find a treasure trove of black holes in small galaxies

Tuesday 7 June, 2022: What creates the aurora on Mars?

Wednesday 8 June, 2022: A huge star forming in the galactic center had a close encounter with another star

Thursday 9 June, 2022: JWST mirror hit by micrometeoroid, but NASA says damage is minimal

Friday 10 June, 2022: Mmmmm, donut illusion

Space news

Space is big. That’s why we call it “space”

Speaking of meteorites…

My friend Geoff Notkin is something of a marvel. Punk rocker, space lover, author… and oh yeah, meteorite hunter.

You may have seen him on his TV show Meteorite Men, where he and his hunting partner Steve Arnold traveled the planet digging up rocks from space. It was a fun show and the delight Geoff radiated when they found something new was always delightful.

He started his own company, Aerolite Meteorites, Inc., where he sells high-quality meteorites, and for years I’ve recommended people go there if they’re interested in getting one for themselves or a loved one.

Well, Geoff recently decided to lighten his load. He took dozens of some of his most amazing specimens from his personal collection and is auctioning them off at Heritage Auctions, a prestigious auction house. You can read the background info here.

The meteorites up for bids are stunning. Just staggering. Take a look at the complete list. These are not junky pieces you’ll find at mall-type rock shops, but instead excellent and gorgeous pieces of space, some of which I wouldn’t be surprised to see in a museum. I mean, look at this one. Or this one. In fact here’s a pic of it:

[Sikhote-Alin meteorite up for bids. Credit: Geoffrey Notkin]

He calls that one a Flying Wing, but I think it looks more like a cornucopia. Either way, it’s a spectacular Sikhote-Ain (the same kind I sent to 20 BAN subscribers, though mine were, um, somewhat smaller) that’s 27 cm long and weighs over 8 kilos. A nickel-iron chunk of an asteroid that impacted Earth in the 1940s. Wow.

If you have a little more spare cash he also has an intact Pallasite he and Arnold pulled out of the Kansas ground themselves. It’s half a meter long and weighs in at over 100 kilos. Holy crap. Here’s the footage:

That’s a dream come true for a meteorite hunter. Wow. The reserve on it is $200k.

I’ll note that he’s donating some of the proceeds to charity: “And this auction is not just about me; it's also about organizations and people I care about. Part of my proceeds will be donated to the children's charity Beads of Courage and the science museum and educational institution Texas Through Time.”

If you’ve ever wanted to own a world-class (heck, galaxy-class) meteorite, this is your chance. Geoff is a very good friend of mine and I have nothing but respect for him and the work he’s done, and I’m really happy to let y’all in on this.

[Geoff and me at the Denver Gem and Mineral Show in 2019. That’s a slice of a lunar meteorite — a rock from the Moon! — he let me hold. Credit: Phil Plait]

Astro Tidbit

A brief synopsis of some interesting astronomy/science news

And speaking of asteroids…

A couple of years on the blog I wrote about the then-newly discovered asteroid 2020 AV2. It was the first of its kind ever found, an asteroid whose orbit was entirely inside that of Venus. Asteroids are classified by their orbits; ones with orbits entirely inside Earth’s are called Atiras, after the first such found. A little bit tongue-and-cheek, this new class of Venus-interior asteroids were called Vatiras.

[An image of the Vatira-class asteroid 2020 AV2 taken by the Virtual Telescope Project on 8 January 2020. Credit: Gianluca Masi]

AV2 is back in the news because it was just given an official name: 'Ayló'chaxnim, which means “Venus girl” in the language of the Pauma Band of Luiseño Indigenous Americans. The Zwicky Transient Facility (where the asteroid was discovered) is at the Palomar Observatory which is on this band’s ancestral lands, so the ZTF team asked them to help name it.

That’s lovely! I like it when things like this happens; it’s a solid gesture, and recognizes marginalized groups of people. It’s not a huge deal, but a nice one, and if it helps raise awareness that’s good, too. Australia did the same thing naming some radio telescope dishes a couple of years ago, and again I like the idea.

As I’ve written before, “What we name things does mean something, or else we wouldn’t name them.” So we should do it right.

You can email me at [email protected] (though replies can take a while), and all my social media outlets are gathered together at about.me. Also, if you don’t already, please subscribe to this newsletter! And feel free to tell a friend or nine, too. Thanks!