Top Cabinet

In the display area at the top of the structure are some of the prisms and diffusion gratings used in the original spectra lab, along with a small stand used to check the photographic plates made in the lab.

Also in this area is a piece of the Type IAB iron meteorite Campo del Cielo (“Field of Heaven”). Over 50 metric tonnes of this meteorite have been found from this fall; it was first recovered by the Spanish from a field in northern Argentina in 1576, who had heard about this source of iron from the local indigenous peoples. 

This sample, weighing 23 kg (more than 50 pounds), is the largest meteorite in the Vatican collection. Because this piece has not been cut, you can see the surface features that are common to iron meteorites: smooth flow lines and thumbprint-like “regmaglypts” that formed as the object came through the Earth’s atmosphere, melting the surface and flowing material around to make it smooth. 

This sample was donated to the Vatican Observatory by Jay and Barbara Busse.