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
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In Other Languages
- Arabic: النيازك الحديدية
- Bengali: লোহার উল্কাপিণ্ড
- German: Eisenmeteoriten
- French: Météorite ferreuse
- Italian: Meteoriti di ferro
- Japanese: 隕鉄 (external link)
- Brazilian Portuguese: Meteoritos ferrosos
- Simplified Chinese: 铁陨石
- Traditional Chinese: 鐵隕石
Related Media
Iron Meteorite
Caption: This iron meteorite was originally found in Harriman, Tennessee, USA and is now held in the collection of the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, Washington DC, USA. The total mass of the meteorite was about 30kg. Here we see the interior after the meteorite was cut into pieces.
Iron meteorites are largely composed of an iron-nickel. They also often have a crystalline structure which manifests here as a series of crossing shiny straight lines known as a Widmanstätten pattern. This is thought to have formed as the meteoroid (the object that would eventually fall through the Earth's atmosphere as a meteor and land on the ground as a meteorite) cooled very slowly in the vacuum of space in the early solar system. This led to the growth of this crystalline structure.
Credit: Chuck Sutherland
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License: PD Public Domain icons
