Night (301)Energy (gigajoules)1 10 100 1,000 10,000 100,000 1,000,000Day (255)WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM 61At Glorieta Mountain, Schoner kept
coming back because he believed his Holy
Grail stone was out there. He was hunting
a 40-pound chunk of pallasite that his
mentor, meteor expert Harvey Nininger,
first predicted should exist in the late
1930s. Whereas most meteorites are stony
or iron, a pallasite comes from the bound-
ary between an asteroid’s core and its sur-
face. A pallasite has a rugged exterior, but
when cut open, the stones show off like a
gem, revealing brightly colored olivine
crystals embedded throughout.
In fact, hundreds of pounds of large
meteorites had been pulled from Glorieta
Mountain starting in 1884, but most were
iron. Based on their composition, Nininger
had told the then teenage Schoner that a
large chunk of pallasite — about 40 pounds
— should still be waiting in the dirt.
The discovery of a lifetime finally came
in 1997. Schoner had picked up a new
metal detector and headed out to search for
the stone. As he calibrated the instrument,
he walked in a small area around his car to
test how it responded. Then it went crazy.
Elbow deep under the surface in a small
crater-like depression, he found a 44-pound
(20kg) meteorite exactly like the one Nin-
inger had predicted. Schoner won’t say how
much money he got, but only that he sold
the stone to the well-known meteorite col-
lector and dealer Darryl Pitt in a partial
trade. Pitt took the risk of cutting the pal-
lasite into slices and sold pieces all over the
world. The largest section recently sold at
auction for $82,000.
“Parting with that big pallasite was a
mental trauma for me, even though it is
only a big glorious rock. I labored for years,
walking untold miles to find it,” Schoner
says. “I do not have a slice of it, and that is
OK, as it is really only a rock — unlike any
other rock, though.”
For his part, Pitt says the pallasite as
well as Schoner are two of the most inter-
esting specimens he’s encountered in a long
career chasing meteorites.
A fresh fall
Schoner used funds from the meteorite, as
well as cash from selling off property he
owned in Flagstaff, to buy the Tombaugh
house. He moved the small home to a lot
at the base of Mars Hill, where the astron-
omer discovered Pluto. Tombaugh lived
there with his wife and young children
before moving to the White Sands Missile
Range in New Mexico to help the military
learn to track projectiles more precisely.
Schoner began the renovation process, but
not long after, he was hospitalized with
profound brain trauma caused by a rare
form of encephalitis — inf lammation of
the brain. Doctors thought he’d be per-
manently disabled. Schoner fought back
and has regained much of his mental acu-
ity, though he still struggles with stamina
and simple math that once came easy to
him. He makes his living now through his
company, PetroSlides, where he creates
thin sections of meteorites for researchers
and collectors all over the world. He’s even
had the opportunity to handle rocks from
Mars and one potentially from Mercury.
And he gets his fix of meteorite hunting
thanks to his rooftop camera. He’s caught a
handful of fireballs already, but one recent
event has Schoner thinking the find of a
lifetime might still be waiting.
His camera caught a bright fireball
October 4, 2014. The bolide lit up the skies
over Flagstaff in the early morning hours
and left a trail of lingering meteor smoke
that mystified local residents, who took
their photos to social media. On the sparsely
populated Hopi reservation to the north,
people said they felt the air shake and the
ground move, rattling their windows.
Schoner’s rooftop camera was the only
one to capture the fireball on video. The
instrument wasn’t dialed in enough to catch
the exact fall path, but Schoner says he has
a rough idea where it landed from talking
to residents and comparing with onlinephotos. Its likely placement on a Native
American reservation means permission is
required to search. He plans to mount an
effort to find the stone, starting by getting
the word out to let locals know what could
be strewn across the ground. Schoner rates
the rock’s potential significance by its “born-
on” date, which stands out in his mind.
Only 132 Mars meteorites have ever
been found. Two fell in early October of
different years. Like a meteor shower that
returns at the same time each year, Schoner
says he has a gut-level feeling that Earth
crosses paths with a martian asteroid —
a large rock kicked off the Red Planet in
an ancient impact — around the same
time each year.
Statistically, Cooke says Schoner’s
expectation of a martian meteorite is
highly unlikely to hold up. But after Glorieta
Mountain, the space rock hunter has shown
that odds don’t mean much to him.LEARN ABOUT EFFORTS TO TRACK AND RAISE AWARENESS OF ASTEROID THREATS AT http://www.Astronomy.com/toc.This thin section of the 44-pound (20 kilograms)
Glorieta Mountain pallasite recently sold at auc-
tion for $82,000. COURTESY DARRYL PITTNASA recently released a map of large meteor
events, which conclusively shows impacts hap-
pen with no trends in location or timing. NASAAsteroids strike anywhere, anytime