The Meteorite Collection in the Natural Science Museum of Turin1

The Natural Science Museum of Turin is the owner of a small but nice collection of meteorites, partly obtained by means of direct acquisition during the last 30 years, and partly inherited from the rather old collection of the University of Turin. This collection was partially forgotten for the last 50 years, and after 1936 the collection became almost invisible. In the last 30 years the meteorite samples were tightly packaged and retained in the basement of the museum building. Currently a new listing of the meteorite collection is in progress and almost finished, in which every sample is described, measured and weighed. For each sample the authors acquired high resolution images and examined historical documentations. Images were acquired with a desktop scanner, which was found to be an ideal tool for this purpose. A classification based on most famous meteorite catalogues is coupled to each description. About eighty samples (and probably a new meteorite, not described until now) will be depicted in the new catalogue, which hopefully will be published during 2009. The authors want to inform the international community that Turin the Museum holds an important collection containing almost all of the Piedmont meteorites (e.g. MOTTA DI CONTI, CERESETO, ALESSANDRIA), some Italian meteorites of considerable historical importance (TRONZANO, ALFIANELLO, ASSISI, SIENA), together with a selection of American and Eastern European samples.