Luke Daly
The Glasgow planetary geologist who helped organise the search that recovered most of the Winchcombe meteorite in 2021.
Key facts
- Nationality
- British
- Field
- Planetary geologist
Luke Daly is a planetary geologist at the University of Glasgow who studies meteorites and space samples at the scale of single atoms and crystals.
After the Winchcombe fireball of 28 February 2021, scientists in the UK Fireball Alliance worked out a likely fall area from camera recordings. Daly helped coordinate the search team, which brought together researchers and volunteers from across Britain during the Covid-19 lockdown. Teams walked slowly in lines across fields near Winchcombe in Gloucestershire, scanning the ground for small dark stones.
On 6 March 2021 a volunteer in the team, Mira Ihasz, found the largest single piece, about 152 grams, in a sheep field. It had made a small impact pit in the soil. Other pieces were found by the team and by local people, and in all about 600 grams were recovered.
Daly went on to help study Winchcombe in detail, as well as samples of the asteroids Ryugu and Bennu. He has also studied how space weathering, the slow battering of asteroid surfaces by the solar wind, can create water on the surfaces of airless bodies.
On the timeline
- 6 March 2021The largest Winchcombe piece is found