The Launton meteorite
An evening fireball and a triple bang over Oxfordshire, then a stone of just over a kilogram.
Key facts
- Fell
- 15 February 1830
- Where
- Launton, near Bicester, Oxfordshire
- Type
- L6 ordinary chondrite
- Mass
- about 1.1 kg
- Where it is kept
- Museum collections
- Nation today
- England
At about half past six on the evening of 15 February 1830, people around Bicester saw a fireball and heard three detonations. A single stone of just over a kilogram was found at Launton, a village a few kilometres to the east.
The triple bang is typical. As a meteoroid slows from cosmic speed it creates a sonic boom, and when it breaks apart in the air each piece can make its own shock wave, so witnesses on the ground hear a series of explosions followed by rumbling.
Launton is an L6 ordinary chondrite, low in iron and strongly heated inside its parent asteroid. It is one of a cluster of early falls in the south Midlands: Hatford and Aldsworth also fell within about 50 kilometres.
Did you know?
Three meteorites, Hatford, Launton and Aldsworth, fell within about 50 kilometres of one another in the south Midlands.
Launton fell in the same year as the Perth stone in Scotland.
Find out more
- Launton in the catalogue: the official class and recorded mass
- L chondrites: what this kind of meteorite is and where it comes from
- All the meteorites of Britain and Ireland, with a map
- Found something in the UK or Ireland? What to do next
Nearest other British and Irish meteorites
- Hatford 9 April 1628 · about 40 km away
- Aldsworth 4 August 1835 · about 50 km away
- Winchcombe 28 February 2021 · about 60 km away
- Barwell 24 December 1965 · about 75 km away