Where to buy a small piece of space?

September 17, 2024 7:02 PM

The birthday of someone near and dear to me fast approaches. This person is totally fascinated by the moon and outer space in general but not in a science nerd sort of way. More of a dreamy “if-I-could-only-get-there-wow-how-beautiful” kind of way. I’ve already gotten him a copy of Cosmicomics, but I would also like to get some authentic meteorite dust/a small piece of meteorite if it is at all possible to acquire something like this legally and for under $200 ish.

Anyone have recommendations for websites that might sell something like this with a certificate of authenticity that means anything? Or ideas for a different present for my deserving space gazer ?

posted by leafmealone to Science & Nature (9 answers total)

I met an astrophysicist with a spiral galaxy and meteorite pendant like this one (Etsy link) and thought it was awesome.
posted by heatherlogan at 7:13 PM on September 17 [1 favorite]

I kickstarted this ages ago, but it's public now: Eau de Space
posted by cobaltnine at 7:31 PM on September 17 [6 favorites]

Elise Matthesen makes jewelry out of meteorite and dinosaur bones. Everything she has up on her etsy is outside your budget, but if you reached out to her directly I bet she'd have ideas.
posted by shadygrove at 8:00 PM on September 17

Best answer: The thing that makes meteorites distinctive is the crystal pattern of the iron. (Quick science: there are stony meteors and nickel/iron meteors; the latter are usually more distinctive when in your hand.) The crystal pattern is called Widmanstatten Patterns or Thompson Structures. They are indicative of really really really slow cooling-- we're talking like 1 degree of cooling over 10,000-100,000 years. Those meteors were once gigantic liquid droplets of liquid iron (and nickel and other crap) drifting in space, many miles across, and at their centers, they cooled so slowly that these patterns appear. And then somehow over time the asteroid that was miles across was so altered by its time in space that metal from inside it fell to Earth as a meteor.

The pattern on your pendant or whatnot means you're holding in your hand something that took millions of years to cool to solid while inside literal miles of iron. That is the gift I would give, a pendant or slab of iron meteorite which was once there, deep in hot iron so very long ago, and still bears the signs of its experience.

And yeah, they'e all over etsy. Are they fake? Well, they're cheap, but that could just be the supply of meteorite is good. So you could probably pay a little more for that certificate.
posted by Sunburnt at 8:19 PM on September 17 [7 favorites]

Does the person have tattoos, and if so, would they like the gift of a small moon (or other celestial object) tattoo from a good artist?
posted by erst at 8:33 PM on September 17

The Mini Museum shop has a meteorite section. There seems to be a selection of items in your price range. At least one of their mini museum collections has a couple of extraterrestrial samples, but I think that is out of your range.

Space exploration is adjacent to space and it opens up some gift opportunities. I have a replica of the manual that the Appolo astronauts studied and consulted. I have an illustration of all the tools that they had (camera, screwdriver, etc...). I have a poster of the trajectory that one of the missions followed. I have a replica of the bag that they used to collect samples. There are some neat replicas here: Luna Replicas. Or here: Concord Aerospace.

I was introduced to these "laser crystals" on metafilter nearly 20 years ago. They're sculptures of astronomical objects.
posted by stuart_s at 9:58 PM on September 17 [2 favorites]

Some students of mine gave me an acre of the moon about 20 years ago for Christmas. Current price $40, which gets you a Certificate and other merch. It's cheaper pro-rata (and drier) than the what3words 9 sq.m. of raised bog I recently bought for my granddaughters.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:36 AM on September 18 [1 favorite]

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) once designed a wonderful series of space tourism posters that one may print free for personal use. Etsy of course has a variety of options, or a local print shop could do it from the files.
posted by teremala at 4:14 AM on September 18 [4 favorites]

EBay has a number of reputable meteorite sellers. I really like the nickel-iron meteorites. You can get unpolished pieces, polished pieces, slices that are acid etched to show the grain, end cuts that are unpolished on one side and polished and acid etched on the other side. Look at the seller ratings and number of sales. The Canyon Diablo meteorites from an Arizona meteorite are very affordable. Campo de Cielo meteorites from Argentina are just a bit more, and Muonionalusta meteorites from Scandinavia have fantastic patterns and cost somewhat more. My Campo de Cielo meteorite is estimated to have cooled to a solid state about 4.556 billion years ago.

Meteorite Charts (to view I had to wait about 10 seconds twice and click “skip ad” twice):
https://www.scribd.com/document/426070660/Meteorite-Charts
posted by Ministry of Truth at 12:41 AM on September 19