A CAMPO DEL CIELO METEORITE

About 4,000 years after having collided with Earth, Campo del Cielo (“Field of the Sky”) meteorites were first written about in 1576 by Spanish explorers when their unearthly origins had yet to be understood. It was a “Campo” that was the first large meteorite displayed at the British Museum of Natural History, and several large Campo del Cielo masses can be found today in the finest museums throughout the world.

The frictional stresses during atmospheric passage caused it to explode and break up into thousands of pieces. The larger iron masses ploughed into the ground at such a high velocity, an array of at least 26 impact craters formed , the largest being 91 x 115 meters. The meteorite is from chemical group IAB and has been modeled as having formed on a chondritic asteroid as a result of a cataclysmic collision at cosmic velocity with another asteroid in deep space.

Christie's would like to thank Dr. Alan E. Rubin at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Los Angeles for his assistance in preparing this catalogue note.