In the Acknowledgements section, I wrote that I was thanking the people who not only “helped directly with the book, but also those who helped me gain the knowledge and experience that I would need in order to write it.” My view is that if you’re writing a how-guide to something, you really need to know your subject. It has been seventeen years since I found my first meteorite, and one of the remarkable things about my work is I am always learning new things, developing new techniques and hunting strategies, testing new equipment, and gathering additional knowledge about the strange and fascinating world of meteorites. If I had written Meteorite Hunting even a year earlier, it would have not been the book that it is. Our successes in the field while filming Meteorite Men Season Two added to its content, because we had unique experiences while hunting for meteorites north of the Arctic Circle in Sweden and in the Australian Outback, and also had the extraordinary pleasure of pitching our tents on the floor of Chile’s mangificent Monturaqui meteorite crater.

"Meteorite Hunting" was published Feb. 1, 2011

My friend Chris Cokinos, author of my favorite meteorite book The Fallen Sky, did me the great honor of writing the Introduction, and astronomer and asteroid specialist Dr. Larry Lebofsky and his wife Nancy, carried out a stellar job as editors. My Meteorite Men co-host, Steve Arnold, read the manuscript and made helfpul comments, as did my researcher Katherine Rambo, and my great friend Dr. Art Ehlmann, Curator Emeritus of the Oscar E. Monnig Meteorite Gallery in Fort Worth, Texas. So, I did call in some heavyweight intellects to assist, and Meteorite Hunting is the best we could make it.

A 468-gram iron meteorite found near the Henbury Craters in Australia

The book features many never-before-seen photographs from the first and second seasons of Meteorite Men. For the past couple of years I’ve been putting aside some of the best location and expedition photos for use in the book. I wanted to save something special for the new work, instead of reprinting photos that viewers and enthusiasts had already seen in other publications.

From Chapter 14
Excavating Meteorites and Documenting Finds

When Steve and I were north of the Arctic Circle in Sweden hunting the Muonionalusta strewnfield, we found a beautiful 30.4-kilogram (67-pound) iron at a depth of about 1 1/2 meters. The meteorite had been transported by a long-vanished glacier and had been deposited in the terminal moraine—unsorted debris dropped as an ice sheet melts and recedes. The iron was securely wedged under a boulder that had also been dropped by the glacier. This find proved that our pulse induction detector could, indeed, see right though large rocks. It also proved that sometimes there is no substitute for hard manual labor. Our permit to hunt at the site specified that we were not allowed to use mechanized vehicles in the forest, so we had to dig the iron by hand. The combined efforts of our four-person team were not sufficient to shift the boulder, which easily weighed several hundred pounds. Sometimes meteorite recovery is all about determination, and there was no way we were leaving that marvelous specimen in the ground. After several strategy discussions, and several hours of experimentation, we greatly expanded the size of hole, dug around the boulder, and under it, until we were able to dislodge the trapped meteorite by having our friend and colleague Carin Österburg jump up and down on it until it worked loose.

Every expedition is different and every challenge requires a new solution. Persistence pays off and, once in a while, brute force wins out.

Meteorite Hunting is 100 pages with full color throughout. It features 100 exclusive photographs, illustrations and diagrams, and was published by Aerolite Meteorites LLC, in Tucson, Arizona. Copies can be ordered safely and easily, online at www.meteoritehunters.tv or by calling the Aerolite offices at 888 SKY ROXX or 520 742 3333.

Watch the skies!

To most people the study of meteorites might perhaps seem as “hard science” a topic as one could find. Planetary geology, the formation of asteroids, the theories of chondrule creation, how meteorites heat up and break up in our atmosphere, where they fall, and what they are made of are just a few of the topics we research and ponder. So, what a delight it is to find a book that does not deal, primarily, with the composition and classification of meteorites, but rather delves deeply into their mystery, history, and allure.

Christopher uses meteorites as a vehicle to embark upon his own journey of discovery, at the same time considering the astonishing journeys they have made. While visiting some of the most famous meteorites sites in the world including Cape York, Greenland; Antarctica; the Brenham, Kansas strewnfield, and Meteor Crater, Arizona; he ponders the motives and passions of brilliant and eccentric scientists, researchers, hunters and entrepreneurs who made the study of—or the acquisition of—meteorites the pivotal moments of their lives. And he makes some significant discoveries about his own life along the way.

“We each have found ourselves lost in the dark wood, whatever we thought the true way had been or can be, but for me, in no small measure, I found the path out because it was lit at times with the passage of shooting stars. This book is an exploration of lives, including my own, caught in such light.”

The editor of Istope: A Journal of Literary Nature and Science Writing and a professor of English at Utah State University, Christopher is a literary writer in every sense of the word. His prose is unique and lyrical, full of imagery and contemplation. There is also plenty of humor and plenty of adventure, and rich portraits of characters who played critical roles in the history of space rocks.

The Fallen Sky is an intensely personal book. Christopher digs into the lore of space rocks and shooting stars and then uses what he learns about them to examine his own life. It is the most personal and most moving book about space rocks since Harvey Harlow Nininger’s great autobiography, Find a Falling Star, published in 1972 and now long out-of-print.

A beautiful and thoughtful work, The Fallen Sky belongs on the bookshelf or bedside table of everyone interested in meteorites, astronomy, the study of obsession, and the history of science.

On olivine-rich pallasites:

“The olivine, which on Earth is the gemstone peridot, seems to glow from within. Slices of pallasites look a bit like the coat of a metal leopard with green spots . . . Brenham olivine is autumnal and ethereal, like an October forest and sky in a luminist painting. The curves of metal look like sinuous paths connecting lakes seen from on high. A slice of Brenham? It’s a silver sponge that soaks up light.”

The Fallen Sky: An Intimate History of Shooting Stars by Christoper Cokinos is published by Penguin USA on July 30, 2009
Hardcover
9.25 x 6.25 in
528 pages
$27.95