AGATOR EL FEROUA 001 — THE LARGEST LUNAR MARE METEORITE ON EARTH - photo 1
AGATOR EL FEROUA 001 — THE LARGEST LUNAR MARE METEORITE ON EARTH - photo 2

AGATOR EL FEROUA 001 — THE LARGEST LUNAR MARE METEORITE ON EARTH

Sold
$ 189 000
Auction dateClassic
28.03.2023 11:00UTC -04:00
Auctioneer
CHRISTIE'S
Event location
USA, New York
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ID 926996
Lot 19 | AGATOR EL FEROUA 001 — THE LARGEST LUNAR MARE METEORITE ON EARTH
When we look at the Moon with the naked eye, we see the bright lunar highlands and the dark lunar maria. These vast basaltic plains result from volcanic activity. The broad dark areas of the Moon were referred to as maria (Latin for “seas”) by Galileo who first peered at the Moon with his primitive telescope and thought they were covered in water. In fact, these regions are indeed seas: the basaltic plains are seas of lava. They are less reflective than the lunar highlands, making them appear dark to the naked eye.

Now offered is the largest lunar mare (lunar basalt) meteorite on Earth. The single largest apart from untouchable Apollo material.

The Moon is among the rarest substances on Earth — less than 1400 kg of the Moon is known to exist on Earth and every single bit could fit in the trunk of a large SUV. Of that amount, Apollo astronauts returned with approximately 382 kg of the Moon and not one milligram of this material is available for private ownership. As for the nearly 1000 kg of lunar meteorites, i.e., pieces of the Moon ejected from the lunar surface following an asteroid impact (and nearly all of the craters on the Moon are the result of such impacts), a good deal of that material is also untouchable as a result of its residency in the world’s great museums and research institutions.

The “dark” parts of the Moon make up only a small fraction of lunar meteorites. Prior to the discovery of the specimen now offered, there were only six kilograms of lunar basalt meteorites documented. With the advent of Agator el Feroua 001 — a single two kilo stone found 175 miles east of Timbuktu, Mali on April 14, 2022 — the amount of lunar basalt increased by 25%.

Scientists identify Moon rocks by specific textural, mineralogical, chemical, and isotopic signatures. Many of the common minerals found on Earth’s surface are rare or absent on the Moon and some lunar minerals are unknown on Earth. Agator el Feroua 001 is extremely fresh and is blanketed in black fusion crust. As is the case with all meteorites that are one-of-a-kind and not part of a meteorite shower, a sample was removed to enable its classification as well as to provide a sample for a sanctioned repository for future research. As described by Dr. Carl Agee, a NASA researcher who is among the world’s most revered classifiers of exotic extraterrestrial samples (see lot 17 “Black Beauty”), the matrix is an unbrecciated mix of gray and tan grains of olivine, pyroxene and acicular ilmenite. Numerous pockets of shock melt and maskelynite are in evidence. The findings of Dr Agee’s team were vetted by a panel of colleagues on the Meteoritical Society’s Nomenclature Committee and then published in the journal of record, the Meteoritical Bulletin. Furthermore, this is one of the only lunar meteorites covered in fusion crust that formed during the rock’s fiery penetration of Earth’s atmosphere. In the case of most lunar meteorites, the fusion crust deteriorated while remaining on the ground for hundreds of years.

Sleekly sculptural and accompanied by a custom armature, now offered is a holy grail of meteorites generally, and from the Moon specifically. Worthy of the greatest museums on the planet, in addition to being a simply sublime meteorite, this is the largest lunar basaltic meteorite on Earth.

The official classification of Agator el Feroua 001 appears in the 111th edition of the Meteoritical Bulletin. The write-up was done by one of the world’s most renowned classifiers of lunar meteorites, Dr. Carl Agee, the Director of the Institute of Meteoritics.

Christie's would like to thank Dr. Alan E. Rubin at the Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles for his assistance in preparing this catalogue.

114 x 183 x 88mm (4.5 x 7.25 x 3.5 in.) and 2155.8 grams (4.75 lbs)
Category:Meteorite
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
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28.03.2023
27.03.2023
Phone +1 212 636 2000
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