Meteorites
The observatory has two meteorite collections; The Pavell Collection and The Merchant Collection. Meteorites are usually named for a nearby town or geographic feature where they landed. They are classified as either a fall (a witnessed event), or a find (pieces found that were later determined to be meteorites.) Most meteorites are material left over from the formation of the solar system. But some are pieces blasted off of another solar system body in an earlier collision that drifted through space for millennia before eventually falling to Earth. One of our collections contains meteorites of Lunar and Martian origin. Click the links below to view the collections.