{"id":26757,"date":"2021-03-09T00:01:43","date_gmt":"2021-03-08T23:01:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/?p=26757"},"modified":"2024-01-21T19:10:40","modified_gmt":"2024-01-21T18:10:40","slug":"apparent-carbonaceous-meteorite-fall-in-winchcombe-cheltenham-uk-on-28-february-2021-at-2254-ut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/?p=26757","title":{"rendered":"WINCHCOMBE meteorite fall (CM2, ~601.9 grams, 9 masses) in Winchcombe, Woodmancote and Bishop’s Cleeve, Tewkesbury Borough, Gloucesteshire, UK on 28 February 2021 at 21.54:15.88 – 21.54.24.12 UT"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last update: 28 February 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A CM2 chondrite fell on the Wilcock family’s driveway in Winchcombe at location 51\u00b057’04.4″N 1\u00b058’32.5″W<\/a>, Tewkesbury Borough, Gloucestershire, UK on 28 February 2021 at 21.54:15.88 – 21.54.24.12 UT. The Wilcock family, school governor Rob, his wife Cathryn, a retired teacher, and their 25-year-old daughter Hannah were downstairs at their home watching TV. Through her open window on the first floor only Hannah heard a loud clattering sound outside which reminded her of a ‘photo frame shattering’. Hannah got up and looked out of the window but because of the dark she could not see anything outside. In the morning, between 7 and 8 a.m. Hannah saw the dust ‘stain’ on the drive when she opened the curtains of her bedroom window on the first floor. Then also Cathryn saw the pyramidal dust patch with a ‘splat sign all around it’ on the driveway through the lounge window on the ground floor. When Hannah came down they discussed their observations. They knew it had not been there the evening before. When Cathryn and Hannah went out they saw the 7- to 10-centimetre wide small pile of the almost completely shattered meteorite outside on the driveway, about half way between the house and their parked car. Small fragments had been ejected all over the lawn and the driveway. First they thought it was a piece of charcoal or remains of a barbecue which someone had thrown or dumped onto their driveway. Rejecting this improbable idea Rob posted a photo about his find in the family’s private social media group which made his son Daniel in Leeds answer and inform him about recent reports of a bolide above the area. Then Rob knew what had happened. At around 9.30 a.m., after taking several photos, he conscientiously and thoroughly collected 319.5 grams of dust (~ 40-50 grams) and smaller fragments (the biggest fragment weighing 7.3214 grams) of the meteorite from the driveway and the lawn and put them in a clean Waitrose freezer plastic bag and some yoghurt-pots. Some bigger meteorite fragments were found up to ten metres away from the fall site. Later during the day Rob contacted the UK Meteor Observation Network which passed their request on to the Natural History Museum in London. Dr Richard Greenwood, Research Fellow in Planetary Sciences at the Open University, was the first to confirm the meteoritic nature of the found fragments at around 3 p.m. in the afternoon of 3 March. He immediately contacted Dr Ashley James King, UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellow in the Department of Earth Sciences at the Natural History Museum in London who immediately took the next train to Winchcombe. After arriving at around 8 p.m. he went to the Wilcocks’ house and from 8.30 p.m. spent about two hours inspecting and weighing the meteorite fragments on the Wilcocks’ kitchen scale in the evening. Later during the day several hours were spent on picking up all the remaining small fragments from the driveway and adjoining lawn. Additionally some reference samples of terrestrial soil near the fall location were collected. A 17.2-gram specimen and some fragments (~ 3 grams) were found on a neighbor’s driveway. Between 29 February and 28 March 2021 Rob Wilcock found another ~9 grams of ~35 small sub-gram fragments on the lawn which he eventually had sold from March 2022. On 8 September 2021 an intact square section of the driveway tarmac containing the impact dent was carefully cut out. It was inspected at the Natural History Museum London on 3 November and will be on public display there, possibly together with the 150-ml ‘double cream’ pot which was initially used to collect the meteorite fragments. The Wilcock family has decided to put a commemorative plaque at the impact location which says ‘The Winchcombe Meteorite landed here at 21:54 on 28th February 2021’. On 6 March, at or around 9.39 a.m., an intact 152-gram specimen (which broke in at least two bigger fragments (103.1g and 48.9g) while being removed from the mud by Dr Luke Daly and Dr. Lydia Hallis) was found by the young Hungarian woman M\u00edra Bianka Ih\u00e1sz in its 5-centimetre deep impact pit in a sheep field of 57-year old Victoria Bond’s 200-acre Rushbury House farm, probably around location 51\u00b056’58.8″N 2\u00b000’36.8″W<\/a>, about 2.38 kilometres west of the Wilcock fall site and about 2.58 kilometres eastnortheast of the fall location of the Carrick mass (51\u00b056’33.9″N 2\u00b002’45.6″W<\/a>), see our three-mass Winchcombe strewn field map below. Ih\u00e1sz was walking behind the Glasgow University search team and had just decided to catch up with them when she noticed a shiny object with an unusual shape from a distance of about three metres. Being unsure whether it actually was a meteorite she called Luke Daly who told her ‘This is it!’. The team celebrated their find with a bootle of Lagavulin 16-year single malt scotch whisky which the team had been given by a local. The larger 103-gram fragment has been on public display inside a desiccator in the ‘Vault’ of the Minerals gallery at the Natural History Museum in London since 17 May 2021. Ih\u00e1sz had just joined her partner Dr Luke Daly, Aine O\u2019Brien, and Dr. Lydia Hallis, a group of scientists of the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences at the University of Glasgow on their systematic meteorite search in the calculated ~ 4 km\u00b2 fall area (4-9 March). Including her find and apparently three other specimens (~5-10 grams, total mass 31 g) found in gardens and on driveways in Woodmancote and some specimens and fragments (0.02 – 7.5 g, total mass of 16 grams) found on 16 March in a field to the southwest of the village of Bishop\u2019s Cleeve, officially about 548 grams in total have been found by locals and about 15 to 20 scientists from The Natural History Museum London, The University of Glasgow, The University of Manchester, The Open University, The University of Plymouth and Imperial College London. The systematic field search campaign of the scientists which started on 4 March lasted for five days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The importance about all of this is not about getting rich. It’s the scientists getting rich information that they can work on. It’s disappointing to read so much in the papers about the money side of it.” (Rob Wilcock)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Due to the meteorite’s scientific significance and its educational value to young people, who can be inspired by learning about meteorites, the Wilcock family has kindly donated 313 grams of meteorite fragments to the national meteorite collection, curated at the Natural History Museum in London, and two other museums. Mira Ihasz’s find, the biggest but unfortunately broken meteorite mass of the Winchcombe fall so far, has equally been donated to the Natural History Museum by the 57-year old farm owner Victoria Bond (and 29-year old Lachlan Bond). The Bonds, the Wilcock family and the locals who had found three other meteorites were informed that they were the owners of the meteorites because they had fallen on their property. This makes the donations of their five meteorites to science even more remarkable. They deserve great appreciation of the scientific community and general public. About three kilometres away from the Wilcock fall site another small meteorite specimen with an estimated diametre of about 3 centimetres was found by David and Valerie Carrick in their garden in Woodmancote while looking for some cat poo which they wanted to remove. The majority of the found meteorites and fragments, currently being stored in a vacuum desiccator, are being analysed and have been classified at the NHM London where they will be curated in the future. The classification was finished by late evening of 4 March. A Winchcombe meteorite consortium<\/em> of scientists has been established to study the meteorite. The NHM and several universities have been doing analyses on fragments of the Winchcombe meteorite, among those the universities of Edinburgh, Leicester, Bristol, Plymouth and the Open University. An oxygen isotope analysis has been performed by Open University PhD student Ross Findlay. An X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis has been performed at the Natural History Museum in London. Analyses of organic phases\/carbonates within the meteorite have been performed. The CRE-age of the Winchcombe meteorite has been determined. According to Dr Luke Daly scientists even consider plans to seal some Winchcombe fragments in vials or glasses filled with different ‘atmospheres’ (vacuum, nitrogen, argon etc.) for a century-long experiment to determine the influence of the gases on a CM chondrite during this time. I-Xe analyses in Manchester have been planned as well. The Wilcock family has donated three fragments of the meteorite to the Winchcombe Museum<\/a> where they have been exhibited<\/a> in a glass cabinet since 1 September 2021. The NHM used these specimens to create a CT scan and a thin section for the future display in the Winchcombe and\/or Cheltenham museum. The Wilcock driveway fall site has been covered with a plastic foil and a wooden frame to protect the dark traces of the shattered meteorite from precipitation as it might be cut out so that it can be displayed in a museum together with the meteorite in the future. Other found specimens (~53.9 grams) have inofficially been reported by some private and commercial meteorite searchers. In March 2021 more masses were found. On 16 March several specimens and fragments weighing 16 grams were found by Sarah Farrelly, Ieuan Spencer, Sheeraz Naqvi, Benjamin Mayne, Daniel Skilton and Dan Kirk in a solar park south-west of Bishop\u2019s Cleeve. Chris Casey found one specimen weighing 12 grams on 21 March and on 23 March 2021 he found another two fragments of a 17.5-gram specimen in the grass of the public park “The Grange” in Bishop\u2019s Cleeve. On 25 March three fragments weighing 19.2 grams were found by Chris Casey and Luther Jackson on the grass verge of a footpath in Two Hedges Road in Bishops Cleeve. Apparently the fragment had been driven over. Another 5.2-gram mass which fragmented on impact was found by Luther Jackson on a footpath in the West of Bishop’s Cleeve, by the A435 on 1 April. There are hundreds of eyewitness reports<\/a> and several security cam, dashcam and skycam video recordings of the bolide. Fifteen fireball or meteor cameras of six networks recorded the event: SCAMP\/FRIPON (three cams), UKFN\/DFN (three cams), AllSky7 (two cams: Ben Stanley and Luc Bastiaens), Global Meteor Network (two cams: Mark and Mary McIntyre and Paul Dickinson (Hullavington) ), and cams from NEMETODE (Network for Meteor Triangulation & Orbit Determination) and UKMON, the UK Meteor Observation Network, (Nick James, Alan Shuttleworth, Derek Robson (through spectroscopic grating), Richard Fleet, Dave Jones, Steve Bosley and Peta Bosley). Winchcombe<\/strong><\/a> (CM2) was officially registered as ‘confirmed fall’ in the Meteoritical Bulletin database on 3 July 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The known 7.87-kilometre Winchcombe strewn field<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The exact and approximate known fall location of the found meteorite masses, based on our own research and data published by S. Russel et al. in MAPS on 26 February 2023. Image: karmaka<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Wilcock fragments (319.5 grams) of the Winchcombe<\/strong> meteorite<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of the found fragments (~ 20 x ~15 mm). Photo: NHM<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of the meteorite fragments (~5 grams, ~ 15 x ~20 mm) with a patch of brownish fusion crust. Photo: Jonathan E Jackson \/ NHM<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of the meteorite fragments (~ 4 grams, ~ 15 x ~20 mm). Photo: NHM<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of the meteorite fragments. Photo: NHM<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fragments of the Winchcombe meteorite at the Natural History Museum, London. Photo: NHM<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A fragment (~2 cm across) reported to weigh about 5 grams. Image: Open University<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fragment of the Wilcock mass of the Winchcombe meteorite at the Natural History Museum, London. Image: BBC<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Larger fragment of the Wilcock mass of the Winchcombe meteorite at the Natural History Museum, London. Image: Wilcock family<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The shattered meteorite on the driveway (Up is ~SSW). Photo: Wilcock family<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The shattered meteorite on the driveway. Photo: Rob Wilcock<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The shattered meteorite on the driveway (Up is ~SSE). Photo: Rob Wilcock<\/p>\n\n\n