LUOTOLAX

Around 10:00 at night a meteor exploded over Viborg, Finland, and many fragments fell onto an ice-covered lake near the village of Luotolahti. The fall was witnessed by two farmers who later recovered some fragments, the largest of which weighed 843 g. Some stones were acquired by Count Fabian Steinheil, who donated the only presently preserved mass of ~556 g to the Helsingfors Universitet, Finland.

Luotolax has an unusually long CRE age for a howardite, 81 (±8) m.y., which is second only to the ~110 m.y. CRE age of Lohawat (Mahajan et al., 2000). Because these ages deviate significantly from the much lower CRE age clusters that comprise most howardites, and since no eucrite or diogenite samples with comparable CRE ages have been identified, the possibility that Luotolax and Lohawat may have originated from a separate HED-like parent body deserves consideration. In support of this, a Mössbauer analysis of Lohawat has revealed that it possesses certain mineralogical differences when compared to Kapoeta, consistent with a different petrogenetic history on its parent asteroid (Tripathi et al., 2000). The specimen of Luotolax shown above is a 0.44 g cut fragment, previously acquired from the Helsingfors Universitet.

Some of the information utilized on this page was was made available courtesy of Jarmo Moilanen—Finnish Meteorites.