Similar to lot 113. First found in 1931 following reports of metal stones found by Aborigines in the middle of Australia’s Outback, more than one dozen distinct meteorite craters have been documented in the Henbury meteorite strewn field (the elliptical area in which a meteorite shower is dispersed across Earth’s surface). This meteorite formed billions of years ago within the molten core of an asteroid whose shattered remains constitute the asteroid belt. Ejected into an Earth crossing orbit, Henbury masses slammed into Earth’s atmosphere where they rained down almost smack in the middle of the Australian continent nearly 5,000 years ago. Henbury is one of the great meteorite showers on record; the impact site is considered sacred by the aborigines who inhabit the area and its arrival may have been witnessed (see lot 113 description). Its cut surface features Henbury’s visually arresting crystalline pattern in which alternating bands of kamacite and taenite, two iron-nickel alloys, are seen in addition to silicate inclusion accents. As an extremely long cooling curve of millions of years is required for the molecules in a molten mass of an asteroid’s core to orient into their crystalline habit, this pattern is diagnostic in the identification of iron meteorites. The crystalline lattice is contrasted by the meteorite’s natural exterior where a stippled surface is accented with regmaglypts, indentations which result from this meteorite bu💞rning through Earth’s atmosphere.