Glossary term: Iron Meteorite
Description: Iron meteorites are meteorites with an abundant amount of iron and nickel. They are thought to be part of the core of asteroids and are very dense and very heavy. Almost 60% of the meteorites found on Earth are iron meteorites even though they make up only 5% of the meteorites that hit Earth's surface. One of the reasons for this is that they are stronger and do not weather as easily as stony meteorites.
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Term and definition status: This term and its definition have been approved by a research astronomer and a teacher
The OAE Multilingual Glossary is a project of the IAU Office of Astronomy for Education (OAE) in collaboration with the IAU Office of Astronomy Outreach (OAO). The terms and definitions were chosen, written and reviewed by a collective effort from the OAE, the OAE Centers and Nodes, the OAE National Astronomy Education Coordinators (NAECs) and other volunteers. You can find a full list of credits here. All glossary terms and their definitions are released under a Creative Commons CC BY-4.0 license and should be credited to "IAU OAE".
