Directory Index: Norton County (AUB)

Directory Index

Norton County (Kansas, USA) Aubrite (stone) Fell 18th February 1948

A shower of stones fell over a considerable area in Norton County, Kansas in February 1948. The main mass, weighing in at around one ton, is now on display at the University of New Mexico. Norton County is a rare, lime-poor enstatite achondrite (Aubrite) - visually, a plain grey-white meteorite with very few nickel iron inclusions. Fusion crust on some aubrites can appear as a silvery colour (see Pena Blanca Springs), although the fusion crust on Norton County is brownish and resembles mud staining at first glance.

The following small Norton County fragments were probably broken up with a scalpel for research purposes originally, before being traded out to meteorite dealers - much in the same way as I've seen researchers separate the CAI's from Allende for study and further analysis. The extremely rare and very seldom available Orgueil carbonaceous chondrite is a good example of this....we dealers/collectors generally only get these after they've been worked on, and even then as small fragments. They still make for some fine micromount examples though, and an affordable way to add one of the rarer, hard to get meteorites to a collection.

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