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The Meteorite Collection in the Natural Science Museum of Turin1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2013

E. Costa  and
L. M. Gallo
E. Costa*
Affiliation:
Dipartimento di Scienze Mineralogiche e Petrografiche, Universitá degli Studi di Torino – Via Valperga Caluso 35, I–10136 Torino, Italy
L. M. Gallo
Affiliation:
Museo Regionale di Scienze Naturali, Sezione di Mineralogia, Petrografia e Geologia – Via G. Giolitti 36, I–10123 Torino, Italy
*
CCorresponding author. Email: emanuele.costa@unito.it
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Abstract

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The Natural Science Museum of Turin is the owner of a small but nice collection of meteorites, partly obtained by means of direct acquisition during the last 30 years, and partly inherited from the rather old collection of the University of Turin. This collection was partially forgotten for the last 50 years, and after 1936 the collection became almost invisible. In the last 30 years the meteorite samples were tightly packaged and retained in the basement of the museum building. Currently a new listing of the meteorite collection is in progress and almost finished, in which every sample is described, measured and weighed. For each sample the authors acquired high resolution images and examined historical documentations. Images were acquired with a desktop scanner, which was found to be an ideal tool for this purpose. A classification based on most famous meteorite catalogues is coupled to each description. About eighty samples (and probably a new meteorite, not described until now) will be depicted in the new catalogue, which hopefully will be published during 2009. The authors want to inform the international community that Turin the Museum holds an important collection containing almost all of the Piedmont meteorites (e.g. MOTTA DI CONTI, CERESETO, ALESSANDRIA), some Italian meteorites of considerable historical importance (TRONZANO, ALFIANELLO, ASSISI, SIENA), together with a selection of American and Eastern European samples.

Keywords

meteors, meteoroidshistory and philosophy of astronomy
Type
Grains
Information
Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , 2009 , pp. 259 - 265
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of Australia 2009

Footnotes

1

Piedmont, Italy.

References

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