Sara Russell of the NHM's Mineralogy Department and Arabelle Sexton, researcher and curator of the Open University's meteorite collection in Milton Keynes. This suggests that the mass exploded at high altitude and that fragments continued to ablate and gain fusion crusting on exposed surfaces, though the surfaces were not melted sufficiently to give a completely smooth finish, leaving a more angular shape to the stones. In a way, this could mean bad news because although a high altitude detonation means some almost perfectly fusion crusted specimens, it could also mean that other meteorites from this fall have been spread far and wide over a large area and prove difficult to recover in this particular locality. The Leighlinbridge name has also been accepted by the Nomenclature Commitee and will be printed in the June 2000 Meteoritical Bulletin. More pictures of Leighlinbridge, courtesy of The Natural History Museum, London.
All images are of the first stone recovered, taken from different angles.