Henbury (Meteorite) – Wikipedia
Henbury is a group of twelve confirmed and several unconfirmed meteorite impact structures, approx. 120 kilometers southwest of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, Australia. The largest of the Henbury crater measures 157 meters in diameter. The arrangement of the impact structures and the distribution of the meteorite fragments along a 6 km long axis indicates a successive fragmentation of the meteoroid along his trajectory until shortly before the crater -forming main masses.
The time of the impact of a medium -sized iron meteorite (middle octaedrite, group IIIAB) is dated 4,200 ± 1900 years, i.e. in the Holocene. The crater field was first mentioned in 1899 in the correspondence of the founder of the Henbury Cattle Station, Walter Parke, with the well -known anthropologist Frank J. Gillen. The first scientific description took place in 1931 by Professor Arthur Alderman from Adelaide University. In Alderman’s report, radial beamed ejection structures were described for the first time, as they were previously only known from impact structures on the moon. In 1931 and 1932, two expeditions led by Robert Bedford from Kyancutta followed. Around 200 kg of meteorite fragments were recovered during the first expedition. It was mostly Schrapnelle, i.e. H. Fragments of the masses destroyed in the impact and ejected from the craters. In 1932 Bedford carried out excavations in the smaller impact craters. In crater No. 13, which in later publications are called “Discovery Crater”, Bedford found several severely corroded iron masses with a total weight of ~ 200 kg at a depth of around two meters. In addition, Bedford discovered a stray field from other meteorite fragments that extended 1 to 5 km northeast of the actual crater field. It was not impact chrapnelles, but meteorites with clear ablation characteristics, i.e. H. Individual flight history. A total of Alderman and Bedford ~ 1350 individual masses were recovered, of which Bedford’s share was just over 425 kg. Bedford later sent a large part of his records and finds to the British Museum in London.
While research was almost exclusively based on the location and arrangement of the impact structures when reconstructing the impact, the location and orientation of the ejection material, but above all, were almost ignored. The flight direction of the Henbury Boliden was therefore only given based on the size distribution of the individual structures in the crater field until the 1990s with West Southwest to Ostnordost. Today it is known that this theory can be excluded due to the main excerpt from the crater -like shock to west and southwest. The Streufeld, documented by Bedford in 1932 and in 1997, also contradicts this theory with hundreds of smaller individual masses with individual ablation history in the northeast of the impact structures. It was only in 2012 that Buhl & McColl managed the clear evidence of the flight direction of the Henbury Boliden from Eastern Northeast to West Southwest, with the inclusion of all available data.
According to reports from the prospector J.M. Mitchell bears this formation in the culture of Aborigines Chindu Chinna Waru Chingi Yaku what translates as much as “sun goes fire to the devil” [first] – This would be an indication that the case and the explosion of the meteorite were observed. According to Alderman and Bedford, the origin of the Henbury crater structures is unknown to the local Aboriginal tribes. In the center of the Kraterfeld is now a sanctuary recognized by the administration of the Henbury Conservation Reserve. In this context, the Australian anthropologist Duane W. Hamacher indicates a taboo of the tribal elders, which prohibits it to share the legends associated with the Aboriginal sanctuary with Europeans.
Since the craters collect the rare rain in the outback from time to time, they also serve as an important water source. The main crater has been protected as a natural reserve since 1934. Today’s Henbury Meteorite Conservation Reserve has existed since 1983 and, in addition to the 12 impact structures, also includes most of the Meteorite Streufeld in the northeast of the crater. The craters were only a little relevant for many years despite their, seen in Australian standards, a short distance from the well -known Uluṟu, since they are located away from the usual tourist paths in the outback and can only be reached via the unpaved Ernest Giles Road. In the meantime, the flow of visitors is growing, over 25,000 tourists visit the place every year.
- ↑ Impact Structures of the World. In: Somerikko.net. Accessed on January 23, 2021 (English).
- Arthur R. Alderman: The meteorite craters at Henbury .In: Nature no. 3240, vol. 128, December 5, 1931.
- Arthur R. Alderman: The meteorite Craters at Henbury, Central Australia . In: Mineralogical Magazine, vol. 23 (March), London 1932.
- Robert Bedford: Surface markings of the Henbury meteorites . In: Nature, vol. 133, April 14, 1934.
- Paul W. Hodge: The Henbury meteorite craters . In: Smithsonian Contributions to Astrophysics, vol. 8, no. 8, Washington 1965.
- Svend Buhl, Don McColl: Henbury Craters & Meteorites – Their Discovery, History and Study . Edited by S. Buhl, Meteorite Recon, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-00-039026-5
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