Wednesday, 16 June 2004

Our own little meteorite mystery

IT

It may have travelled thousands of kilometres through space, been reduced from the size of a house to that of a softball while burning up in Earth’s atmosphere, plonked into the ocean off a Hawke’s Bay beach where it later washed up to be pocketed by Masterton man Gordon Kibblewhite.

The strange, pimply object pictured is thought to be Masterton’s own meteorite which Mr Kibblewhite contacted the Times-Age about after reading of an Auckland family who had a 1.3kg asteroid fragment crash through their roof and fall into their lounge last week.

He said he has had the object for five years since finding it on the beach, where he first thought is was a rusted cannonball.“ I sent it to the Carter Observatory and they handed it on to Victoria University but it could not be positively identified.” Mr Kibblewhite said a letter from the university said it could not be ascertained whether the object was a meteorite or not. But Mr Kibblewhite is pretty sure it is and hopes experts interested in the Auckland meteorite will contact him to shed some light on his own mystery object.