[meteorite-list] Met Bulletin Updates - 2 NWA's and a Nova, and a Question regarding Nomenclature

[Martin Altmann]

Hi Jeff,

should Paris then not rather have been named a "Nova" too than a "Paris"?

(From the Bulletin Database:

"Paris
Unknown location"
(......)

"History: This sample was in an auction box lot bought by Jean-Jacques Corré
at the Hotel des Ventes in Paris. The box was part of the estate of Jean
Simon Colonna-Cimera, an "Ingénieur des Mines," who supervised mines in
foreign countries and in the French Colonies. Corré thought that the stone
might be a meteorite but kept it for 7 years before attempting to have it
identified."


Martin

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com
[mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] Im Auftrag von Jeff
Grossman
Gesendet: Montag, 23. April 2012 13:46
An: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
Betreff: Re: [meteorite-list] Met Bulletin Updates - 2 NWA's and a Nova, and
a Question regarding Nomenclature

The way it works is that meteorites are named based on how much certainty we
have about where they come from.  When we think the coordinates are
accurate, we can name them after very local features.  
For things like NWA and Sahara meteorites, we have some confidence that they
come from northwest Africa and the Sahara in general, but not much more than
that.  The hallmark of the Nova series is that we don't have any good
information about where they were found, or, in some of the early ones, we
thought that information was false.

Nova 011 simply turned up in a market in Russia.There is no accompanying
find story.  Perhaps it's from Russia, perhaps it's an NWA, who knows.  
If there was some kind of find story indicating a local origin, we might
have named it differently, perhaps South Russia or something like that.

Jeff