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Report your find to receive a SM (Sutter's Mill meteorite) number by email to:Petrus.M.Jenniskens@nasa.gov

Samples SM2, 12, and 67 were found in NASA Ames Research Center led volunteer searches, and part of SM30 was donated to NASA Ames, for analysis by SM Meteorite Consortium members. Please consider donating a small part of your find for research so we can sample as many parts of the asteroid as possible.

Recovered finds

The confirmed finds listed below are given in order of SM number assigned. This will be regularly updated. If you find errors, please let us know.

Sutter's Mill Meteorite Consortium

How to preserve your meteorite finds

• Keep magnets away from them (in order not to destroy any natural magnetism in the rock)
• Do not touch the meteorites (in case your hands contain moisture, oils, and bacteria).
• Use aluminum foil to collect the meteorite and to store and handle it.
• When you show the meteorites to others, minimize exposure to moisture (such as from people talking over it).
• Keep plastics away from the meteorite. No storing in plastic bags, plastic containers, no touching with gloves.
• Store the meteorites wrapped in aluminum foil in a clean (no smell) glas jar, covered by a sheet of aluminum foil. Put that jar in a bigger jar with closed lid with some desiccant on the bottom (if no other desiccant is available, one-minute rice will do). Allow the meteorite to dry out in this way to remove all adsorbed water vapor.
• Once the meteorite is dry, after a day or so, put the whole contraption in the freezer in order to stop bacteria growth in the meteorite.

Background

The fall: In the morning of 2012 April 22, at 7:51 PDT, a 2-4 meter sized near-earth asteroid collided with Earth over California's Sierra Nevada mountains. The rock was big enough to be considered a small world, of a size just a little smaller than the near-Earth asteroid that will one day be visited by humans. The impact created a bright fireball that was seen all over California and Nevada. When it penetrated deep enough in the atmosphere, the asteroid broke into many pieces. Big pieces were hard to slow down and kept going a while down range, landing first on the ground. The smaller pieces were quickly stopped by friction with the atmosphere and rained down to Earth after some time. A loud boom and rumble was heard in the mountains over a wide region centered south of Placerville, so loud that several kilotons of kinetic energy had to be released. NOAA-NWS-NEXRAD Doppler-radar sweeps over the area at different altitudes and times recorded meteorites of different size rain to the ground. Near Colama, El Dorado County, eye witnesses reported hearing the meteorites fly through the air shortly after. They landed in a wide area that includes Sutter's Mill, where the first gold was discovered by James Marshall in January of 1848. That discovery led to the worlds largest migration in history, known as the California Gold Rush.

The find: Two days after the meteorites landed on the ground, meteorite hunter Robert Ward found the first 5.5 gram meteorite along the entrance way to Henningsen-Lotus Park. Later that day, meteor astronomer Dr. Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center found a crushed 4 gram meteorite in the parking lot of that same park. A third meteorite was found by meteorite hunter Brien Cook. Rains in the following two days slowed the search, but after the rains a steady stream of meteorite recoveries were made.

Report your find: This website, maintained by Dr. Jenniskens, keeps an official tally of the recovered meteorites. Each recovered meteorite is given a number. By knowing the location of the meteorite in the strewn field, it is possible to relate the properties of the meteorites back to a position in the original asteroid. By using the numbers in publications and trade, thus keeping track of the find location, over time we will get a glimpse of the fascinating little world that collided with Earth.