Howardites
Topic

#Vesta

The giant asteroid Vesta and its meteorites: howardites, eucrites and diogenites.

Lessons (3)

Courses (12)

  • Gravitational fields and escapeHow does a rock leave Mars, the Moon or the asteroid Vesta? Newton's law of gravitation and the idea of gravitational potential give the
  • Igneous petrology of meteoritesMelting and crystallisation on asteroids, the Moon and Mars produced igneous rocks that geologists read with the same tools used on Earth.
  • Mass spectrometry and oxygen isotopesMass spectrometers measure isotope ratios to within about ten parts per million. Oxygen's three isotopes then sort meteorites into famil
  • Spectroscopy: matching meteorites to asteroidsSunlight reflected from an asteroid carries the absorption fingerprints of its minerals.
  • How meteorites are classifiedTens of thousands of meteorites are sorted into a system of classes and groups. This lesson explains the main branches and what the labels o
  • The journey from the asteroid beltMost meteorites begin as fragments of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter. This lesson follows the long, slow route that brings a few of them
  • Worlds that meltedSome early asteroids melted and separated into core, mantle and crust, then were shattered.
  • Isotopes as fingerprintsAtoms of the same element can have different numbers of neutrons. The ratios of these isotopes in a meteorite act like a fingerprint for the
  • Gravity, weight and orbitsGravity holds the Solar System together and decides where meteorites end up. In this lesson you will calculate weight on different worlds an
  • Inside a planet: cores, mantles and crustsNobody can drill to Earth's core, but meteorites let us hold pieces of the cores, mantles and crusts of other worlds.
  • Meteorites and the rock cycleGeologists sort Earth rocks into igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic. Meteorites can be described in the same way, which tells us what happ
  • The small bodies of the Solar SystemBetween and beyond the planets are millions of asteroids and comets. This lesson sets out where they are, how far away they are and how a pi

Books (3)

  • Messengers from Mars, the Moon and VestaAbout one meteorite in a hundred is a piece of the Moon or Mars, and one fall in sixteen comes from the asteroid Vesta. This book shows how
  • Meteoritics for StudentsMeteorites are the oldest rocks we can hold, and reading them uses nuclear physics, chemistry, geology and orbital mechanics. This guide run
  • Space Rocks You Can TouchMost meteorites are 4,567 million years old, older than any rock on Earth. This book explains how a space rock crosses the atmosphere at up

Famous meteorites (8)

  • ALH 84001A potato-sized rock from Mars that sparked a worldwide debate about life beyond Earth.
  • EsthervilleIn 1879 a meteorite half metal and half stone crashed onto the Iowa prairie – a rare mesosiderite, still a puzzle to scientists.
  • JuvinasA single basaltic stone that fell in southern France in 1821 and helped show that some asteroids once had volcanoes.
  • KapoetaA howardite that fell in South Sudan in 1942 – a piece of the battered surface of the asteroid Vesta.
  • MillbillillieA eucrite that fell in the Western Australian outback in 1960, famous for its glossy black fusion crust.
  • StannernA shower of basaltic stones that fell on Moravia in 1808 and gave its name to a distinctive kind of lava from Vesta.
  • TatahouineA meteorite that shattered into green crystals in the Tunisian desert in 1931 – a fragment from deep inside the asteroid Vesta.
  • Wold CottageEngland's largest single meteorite landed beside a Yorkshire ploughman in 1795 – and helped prove that stones fall from the sky.

Meteorite types (11)

  • AchondritesIgneous stones from bodies that melted: asteroids, the Moon and Mars. An achondrite is a stony meteorite without chondrules.
  • AngritesThe oldest volcanic rocks known, from a vanished early planetesimal. Named after Angra dos Reis in Brazil, which fell in 1869, angrites are
  • Asteroidal achondritesFully melted, differentiated rocks from the crusts and mantles of asteroids, Vesta above all.
  • DiogenitesPyroxene-rich rocks from deep inside Vesta. Diogenites are coarse-grained rocks made mostly of orthopyroxene, sometimes with olivine.
  • EucritesVolcanic basalt from the crust of Vesta. Eucrites are basalts and gabbros from Vesta's crust, made mainly of pigeonite (a calcium-poor p
  • HED meteorites: pieces of VestaThe howardites, eucrites and diogenites: crust and mantle rocks from the giant asteroid 4 Vesta. The meteorites this site is named after.
  • HowarditesBroken rubble from the surface of asteroid Vesta, mixing crust and mantle rocks. Howardites are regolith breccias: rocks made from the broke
  • Main-group pallasitesNine in ten pallasites: magnesium-rich olivine in metal related to the IIIAB irons.
  • MesosideritesJumbled breccias of metal and basalt, made in a violent collision. Mesosiderites are breccias of roughly equal parts iron-nickel metal and s
  • Stony-iron meteoritesRoughly equal parts metal and silicate. Rare, and among the most beautiful meteorites.
  • Ungrouped achondritesMelted rocks that match no known group: each may be the only sample of its own world. Some achondrites fit none of the named groups.

Space missions (2)

  • DawnThe mission that confirmed the howardites, eucrites and diogenites come from the giant asteroid Vesta.
  • Deep Space 1The spacecraft that proved ion engines in deep space, then flew past a comet. Deep Space 1 was built to test new technology so that later mi

Meteorite minerals (7)

  • AugiteThe common dark high-calcium pyroxene of basalts, from Earth to the Moon, Mars and Vesta.
  • EnstatiteThe magnesium pyroxene that dominates enstatite chondrites and aubrites, and many chondrules.
  • IlmeniteAn iron–titanium oxide abundant in lunar mare basalts and common in eucrites and Martian meteorites.
  • PigeoniteA low-calcium pyroxene that forms in quickly cooled lavas, typical of eucrites and lunar and Martian basalts.
  • PlagioclaseThe feldspar series from sodium albite to calcium anorthite, the light-coloured mineral of basalts and lunar highlands.
  • Silica minerals: tridymite, cristobalite and quartzSilicon dioxide in its different crystal forms, found in eucrites, enstatite chondrites and lunar basalts. Silica is silicon dioxide.
  • ZirconA tough zirconium silicate that holds uranium, making it one of the best natural clocks.

Glossary (39)

Questions and answers (21)

Impact events (1)

  • Asteroid 2018 LAA predicted impact that delivered a howardite, the meteorite type this site is named after.

Asteroids (2)

  • 2018 LA2018 LA was a small asteroid, less than 2 metres across, discovered on 2 June 2018 by the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona only about eight ho
  • VestaThe howardites, the meteorites this site is named after, come from Vesta. Together with the eucrites and diogenites they form the HED meteor

People (8)

  • Christopher RussellThe UCLA scientist who led NASA's Dawn mission, which orbited Vesta and Ceres and confirmed that the HED meteorites come from Vesta. Chr
  • Edward HowardThe English chemist who found nickel in fallen stones in 1802, and after whom the howardite meteorites are named.
  • Gustav RoseThe Berlin mineralogist who sorted meteorites into families in 1863 and coined the names chondrite and howardite.
  • Harry McSweenThe planetary geologist who helped prove that the SNC meteorites come from Mars and wrote widely read books on meteorites and their parent w
  • Heinrich OlbersThe Bremen doctor and astronomer who discovered the asteroids Pallas in 1802 and Vesta in 1807.
  • Richard BinzelThe MIT astronomer who found the family of small asteroids broken off Vesta and created the Torino scale for impact risk. Richard P.
  • Roberta ScoreThe NASA laboratory manager who picked up ALH 84001 on the Antarctic ice in December 1984, the most famous Martian meteorite of all.
  • Thomas McCordThe planetary scientist who showed in 1970 that the asteroid Vesta has the same colours as basaltic meteorites, and later worked on the Dawn

Meteorites (the 60 largest of 1,187)