Gibeon (meteorite)
The Gibeon meteorite (English Gibeon meteorites, in the literature also sometimes referred to only as Gibeon ) is an iron meteorite whose fragments have been found for the first time in 1836 in South Africa, near the town of Gibeon on the east bank of the Great Fish River. The Fund coordinates are 25 ° 30 ' south latitude and 18 ° 00' eastern longitude. He was first of Capt. James Edward Alexander described. The Imperial geologist P. Range reported in 1913 by individual masses, which were discovered lying in situ on the area occurring Pleistocene Kalahari limestones. Range concluded that the meteorite could have fallen only after formation of these formations. Dating of these layers result in an age 13000-30000 years. The formation age of the meteorite itself is specified with over 4 billion years ago.
Upon entry into the atmosphere, he burst into thousands of fragments that fell in an area of approximately 370 x 185 km - the largest known meteorite strewn field on earth. The Gibeon strewn field is now quite searched, at least 26 tonnes meteorite material were found.
The meteorite comes from the asteroid belt and is classified as a fine octahedrite of group IV A, its structure is polycrystalline and shows the Widmanstatten structure. This structure is a distinctive indicator for meteoritic origin, because there is nothing earthly, which has this structure.
Its color is silvery- metallic luster. The meteorite is composed of the minerals kamacite and taenite. It contains the following elements in the mass order, starting with the highest iron, nickel, cobalt, phosphorus, sulfur, carbon, chromium, copper, platinum, ruthenium, arsenic, osmium, gallium, iridium, rhodium, gold, germanium,, zinc.
Chemical composition: 91.8 % iron; 7.7% nickel; 0.5 % cobalt; 0.04 % phosphorus; 1.97 ppm gallium; 0,111 ppm of germanium; 2.4 ppm iridium
31 fragments of the meteorite can now be seen in the Namibian capital Windhoek.
Widmanstatten structure in the etched surface of a piece of the Gibeon strewn field
Malta height - a shield- shaped covered with well-preserved regmaglypts Gibeon iron meteorite of 30 kg in find condition