Weston

The 1807 Connecticut fall investigated by two Yale professors – the first meteorite fall in the Americas to be studied scientifically.

Key facts

Type

Ordinary chondrite (H4)

Fell or found

Fell (witnessed)

Year

1807 (14 December)

Country

United States (Connecticut)

Mass

about 150 kg, in several stones

Official name

Weston

Early on the morning of 14 December 1807, people in western Connecticut saw a brilliant fireball cross the sky from north to south. It was followed by three loud explosions, and stones fell over the town of Weston and the surrounding area, part of which is now the town of Easton. Several stones were found, some broken into pieces on impact. One of them had smashed onto a rock and shattered. Altogether, around 150 kilograms of meteorite may have fallen.

The Yale investigation

News of the fall reached Yale College in New Haven. Two professors, Benjamin Silliman, a chemist, and James Kingsley, travelled to Weston to investigate. They interviewed witnesses, visited the places where stones had landed, collected specimens and studied them. Their report, published soon afterwards, was the first scientific account of a meteorite fall in the Americas.

Silliman and Kingsley found that the Weston stones resembled meteorites that had fallen in Europe. Only a few years earlier, scientists had accepted that stones fall from the sky, after the work of Ernst Chladni, Edward Howard and Jean-Baptiste Biot. The Weston report helped bring that new understanding to America. At the time the United States was a young nation with few scientific institutions, and the careful study drew wide attention, showing that American scientists could contribute to one of the most debated questions in natural science. Silliman went on to become one of the most influential scientists in the United States, founding a leading scientific journal.

What it is

The Weston meteorite is an H4 ordinary chondrite. Ordinary chondrites are the most common meteorites seen to fall. They are made mainly of olivine and pyroxene, together with small grains of iron-nickel metal and iron sulphide. 'H' stands for high iron: these meteorites contain plenty of metal, which makes them heavy for their size and attracted to a magnet. The number 4 means that the rock was moderately heated in its parent asteroid, enough to change some of its minerals but not enough to erase its chondrules, the small rounded grains that give chondrites their name.

Stones lost and found

Many Weston stones were broken by the people who found them, some of whom hoped to find gold or silver inside. Fragments were scattered and sold, and much of the meteorite was lost. Yale acquired important specimens, which helped to start one of the earliest meteorite collections in America, and today the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History holds a significant part of the surviving material. Other pieces are held in museums around the world.

The largest surviving pieces have dark fusion crusts, formed by melting during the fall, and pale grey interiors with small flecks of metal.

Why it matters

Weston marks the beginning of scientific meteorite study in the Americas. It shows how careful fieldwork, interviewing witnesses and collecting physical evidence, could confirm that stones had fallen from the sky. It helped establish Yale as an early centre of American science and inspired interest in meteorites across the young United States.

It also shows how easily scientific material can be lost when people do not know what they have found. Many Weston stones were broken up and dispersed, leaving scientists with only part of the original fall.

Today, the lesson is clear. If you think you have found a meteorite, don't break it to see inside, and don't try to test it with heat or chemicals. Keep it whole, note where you found it, ask the landowner's permission, and contact a museum or university. Your find could be an important piece of scientific evidence, just as the Weston stones were more than 200 years ago.

Did you know?

See more

Weston in the catalogue