End Cut of NEA 039 — Rare Lunar Mare Basalt

When we look at the Moon with the naked eye, we see the bright lunar highlands and the dark lunar maria. These vast basaltic plains result from volcanic activity. The broad dark areas of the Moon were referred to as mare (Latin for “sea”) by Galileo who first peered at the Moon with his primitive telescope and thought they were covered in water. In fact, these regions are indeed seas: the basaltic plains are seas of lava. They are less reflective than the lunar highlands, making them appear dark to the naked eye. These “dark” parts of the Moon make up only a small fraction of lunar meteorites.

One of only 30 lunar mare basalt meteorites, NEA 039 was found in Libya in 2023, and my ownership of it is now recorded in the Met Bull: "This very fresh specimen has an ophitic igneous texture and is composed of stubby prismatic grains of zoned olivine and pigeonite (mean grainsize ~0.5 mm) and maskelynite laths (up to 1 mm long) together with accessory blade-like ilmenite, chromite, troilite, fayalite and silica polymorph. Shock pockets composed of ‘swirly-textured’ glass"

This is the end-cut of a single stone find. 535g. Backside below. It’s the third largest on Earth, and Tony Irving described it as "extremely fresh" unlike the other large ones.