Falling to Earth approximately 4,200 years ago, the Henbury event is one of the greatest meteorite showers on record, and one of only a handful that occurred in a populated area. Originally discovered in 1931 following reports of Aborigines using metallic stone tools, the Henbury meteorite fractured in the atmosphere creating a cluster of a dozen distinct meteorite craters. The bright mango patina, distinct to Henbury, results from millennia of aging in the Australian desert.
Henbury “is considered a sacred site to the Arrernte people and would have formed during human habitation of the area. Older Aboriginal people would not camp within a couple of miles of the Henbury craters. An elder Aboriginal man explained that Aboriginal people would not drink rainwater that collected in the craters, fearing the “fire-devil” would fill them with a piece of iron. The man claimed his paternal grandfather had seen the fire-devil and that he came from the Sun. An Aboriginal contact said of the crater field: tjintu waru tjinka yapu tjinka kurdaitcha kuka, which roughly translates in the Luritja language as A fiery devil ran down from the Sun and made his home in the Earth. He will burn and eat any bad blackfellows. This indicates a living memory of the event.” (from Wikipedia).
Cue The Gods Must be Crazy or maybe the Thunder Down Under. =)
This Henbury meteorite, at just over 3 kg and 6.5″ x 5.5″, is the newest addition to the Space Collection. that is taking over our entry at work.
The wild Widmanstätten patterns inside a Henbury… the centimeters-long crystals can only be made in space:
It’s an iron-nickel alloy that came from the molten core of a planetary scale body destroyed in our early solar system, which then cooled very, very slowly in space, just a couple degrees per million years, forming beautiful crystalline patterns inside.
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