Abstract

The Vatican Observatory today hosts approximately 1200 meteorite specimens of all major meteorite types from around the world. The collection originated in a series of donations from Adrien Charles Marquis de Maurois, with the majority of specimens donated after his death by his widow in 1935. The collection has grown slowly since then, primarily through trades and donations. The collection boasts a number of historically and scientifically significant specimens, including a piece of the Martian meteorite Nakhla that has been handled by popes. The collection has been used for research in various forms since its early days. In the 1930s, it served as an early test bed for spectroscopic studies with the intention of comparison with asteroid spectra. In the 1990s, the collection served as a proving ground for pioneering work on meteorite porosity measurement using ideal-gas pycnometry and glass-bead immersion, which has become a widely adopted technique. In this past decade, it again served as a proving ground for new techniques; this time for whole-stone low-temperature heat capacity measurement by liquid nitrogen immersion.