Natural Aletai Iron Meteorite 1100 Grams

Aletai meteorite is an iron meteorite originating from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwestern China, formed 4.5 billion of years ago within the metallic core of a shattered ancient asteroid and is world-renowned for its unique chemistry, visual beauty, and Earth's longest recorded strewn field. In its natural, raw state, the meteorite exhibits a dark brown to rusty-ochre weathered crust covered in shallow, thumbprint-like indentations known as regmaglypts. When cross-sectioned and etched with a weak acid, it reveals a coarse octahedrite structural pattern characterized by interlocking, geometric bands of low-nickel iron (kamacite) and high-nickel iron (taenite) that form intricate metallic lattice patterns called Widmanstätten structures. Because of the distinct crystalline orientation of these iron-nickel alloys, polished slices exhibit chatoyancy—a metallic shimmer or flash when tilted under light—and often showcase bright, mirror-like inclusions of the rare phosphide mineral schreibersite.