Astronomy magazine podcast: Own a piece of the rock
Meteorite expert Darryl Pitt talks about an upcoming auction where you can bid on a piece of the Willamette.
Published:
October 18, 2007October 18, 2007
On Sunday, October 28, international auctioneers Bonhams will auction the 30-pound detached crown of the famed Willamette meteorite. The museum exchanged the crown piece for a meteorite traced to Mars. Previously, only slivers of the crown piece have been sold — fetching more than, ounce for ounce, 8 times the price of gold.
Select meteorites deaccessorized from the Field Museum in Chicago, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, and the Macovich Collection in Tucson, Arizona, will also be among the lots offered in this auction. This selection includes a fragment (valued at $3,000 to $4,000) of the only meteorite known to have killed an animal, a cow in Venezuela.
Darryl Pitt, the curator of the Macovich Collection, joins us this week to talk about the auction.
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