To be able to give the meteorites we have recovered a formal name we have to go through some procedures…
Dense meteorite stranding zones (areas where lots of meteorites are found) are awarded a name by the Meteoritical Society Nomenclature committee. The meteorites recovered from these areas are then named after these sites – for example the first recognised lunar meteorite Allan Hills (ALHA for short) 81005 is named after the Allan Hills icefield A in Antarctica. Thus, to be given a name we need the place that the meteorites are found to be called something!
Our issue is that the regions we visited in Antarctica had not been formally allocated names by the countries who administrate these areas. So we have gone through two different routes to formally assign names to the field sites we visited so that we can use the names of these geographical features in future research publications and use them to name the meteorites we recovered.
We are happy to announce that our two main field areas have been approved as the Outer Recovery Icefields in Dronning Maud Land by the Norwegian Polar Institute and Hutchison Icefield in Coats Land (British Antarctic Territory ) by the UK Antarctic Place-names Committee. Both of these field sites contain nunataks (mountain tops emerging from the ice), which have also been named after meteorite and meteor scientists (see below for details). The UK site names are included in the UK Antarctic Gazetteer (https://apc.antarctica.ac.uk/) and are available for use on all maps and charts and in all publications. They are also included in the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) Composite Gazetteer of Antarctica (https://data.aad.gov.au/aadc/gaz/scar/ ).
These names have now also been approved by the Meteoritical Society as dense meteorite collection areas and we will be able to call the meteorites either OUT (for those collected at the Outer Recovery Icefields) and HUT for those collected from the Hutchison Icefield.
Outer Recover Icefields Area
Outer Recovery Icefields. named because of its proximity to the Recovery Glacier found adjacent to the northern extent of the area. Link to online Norwegian record.
Halliday Nunatak (81°24’32.97″S, 18° 1’59.88″W): Located in the Outer Recovery Icefields. named after Canadian astronomer Dr Ian Halliday (1928-2018) who was a Canadian astronomer with expertise in meteor (asteroid and comet) delivery rates to the Earth. Link to online Norwegian record
Hutchison Icefield Area
Hutchison Icefield (81°30′ 30″S, 26°10’W): Named after British meteorite scientist Dr Robert Hutchison (1938-2007) who was the Curator of Meteorites at the Natural History Museum, London. He was Head of the Cosmic Mineralogy Research Programme at the NHM, and responsible for the national meteorite collection, one of the most significant meteorite collections in the world. Awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2002; asteroid 5308 named Hutchison by the International Astronomical Union. Named in association with names of pioneering meteoriticists grouped in this area. Link to online SCAR record.
Turner Nunatak (81°27′ 50.42″S, 26°24’48.88″W): Located in the Hutchison Icefield. Named after Professor Grenville Turner FRS (b. 1936) pioneering lunar and meteorite scientist, Emeritus Professor at the University of Manchester. He established the University of Manchester Isotope Cosmochemistry group and his pioneering work on rare gases in meteorites led him to develop the argon–argon dating technique that demonstrated the great age of meteorites and provided a precise chronology of rocks brought back by the Apollo missions. He was one of the few UK scientists to be a Principal Investigator of the Apollo samples during the time of the US manned Moon missions. Link to online SCAR record.
Pillinger Nunatak (81°34’40″S, 26°24’15″W): Located in the Hutchison Icefield. Named after Professor Colin Pillinger FRS (1943-2014), English planetary scientist who was a founding member of the Planetary and Space Sciences Research Institute at Open University in Milton Keynes, and through his career studied stable isotopes in Apollo Moon samples, martian meteorites and asteroidal meteorites. He was also the Principal Investigator for the British Beagle 2 Mars lander project. Link to online SCAR record.
With many thanks to Dr Adrian Fox (UK Antarctic Place-names Committee), Dr Oddveig Øien Ørvoll of the Norwegian Polar Institute for all of their help with the naming of these regions and advice from Laura Gerrish at the British Antarctic Survey.
