Brenham (meteorite)

Brenham is a pallasite meteorite found near Haviland, a small town in Kiowa County, Kansas, United States. Pallasites are a type of stony–iron meteorite that when cut and polished show yellowish olivine crystals. The Brenham meteorite is associated with the Haviland Crater.

History

In 1949, a collector named H.O. Stockwell discovered a mass of, known at the time as "The World's Largest Pallasite Meteorite."
In October 2005, geologist Philip Mani and meteorite hunter Steve Arnold, searching on a farm in Kiowa County, located and recovered the largest fragment ever found of Brenham: a single pallasite mass of. This specimen is an oriented pallasite, meaning that its shape caused it to maintain a stable orientation during entry into the atmosphere instead of tumbling, and the third largest pallasite of this type found in the world.

Classification and composition

Brenham is an anomalous pallasite.

Specimens

The mass found by Mani and Arnold is currently housed in a private collection in Texas.
The mass discovered in 1949 is called The Space Wanderer and is on display at The Big Well in Greensburg, Kansas. It was found, and excavated using hand tools, on the Ellis Peck farm, east of Greensburg, Kansas.
A large collection of Brenham meteorites, along with numerous fragments weighing a total of 8,500 pounds, were once housed at the now-closed Kansas Meteorite Museum and Nature Center in Haviland, Kansas.