Complete Slice of Peña Blanca Spring

ONE OF ONLY THREE COMPLETE SLICES OF THIS RARE AND HISTORIC WITNESSED FALL

The Peña Blanca Spring meteorite crash landed to Earth on August 2, 1946, witnessed as it fell into the swimming pool at the headquarters of the A.S. Gage Ranch in West Texas. As an aubrite, it is an extremely rare type of meteorite with fewer than 100 known examples out of the nearly 80,000 that have been classified and accepted as meteorites by the Meteoritical Bulletin.

Peña Blanca Spring is an achondrite made up primarily of brecciated enstatite regolith, but this distinguishes itself with a gigantic clast of large enstatite crystals at the top center. This meteorite, along with the rest of the aubrites, were once hypothesized to originate from Mercury; now, one of the leading theories is that aubrites are part of the stripped away mantle of a "proto-Mercury," violently exploded off the surface of this ancient planet by a large collision, pushed into the asteroid belt by the solar wind, and eventually becoming the E-type asteroids, before falling to Earth.

This slice is one only three full slices cut from the main mass, and thus represents an extremely rare offering from an exceedingly rare meteorite.

REFERENCES:

Meteoritical Bulletin Entry for Peña Blanca Spring