Bethlehem

Seen to fall in 1859 in the United States · 14 g recovered · H

Bethlehem is the lightest of the 146 falls recorded in the United States. It is the only H fall recorded in the United States.

Group: H chondrites
Recorded position: 42.533° N, 73.833° W

The map is centred on Bethlehem. Rings every 50 km; numbers match the table below.

Nearest recorded falls

The closest recorded fall to Bethlehem is Schenectady, 38 km to the north. Within 250 km lie seven other recorded falls.

#	Fall	Year	Class	Recovered	Distance
1	Schenectady	1968	H5	283 g	38 km north
2	Wethersfield (1982)	1982	L6	2.8 kg	132 km south-east
3	Wethersfield (1971)	1971	L6	350 g	135 km south-east
4	Yorktown (New York)	1869	L5	250 g	139 km south
5	Peekskill	1992	H6	13 kg	139 km south
6	Weston	1807	H4	150 kg	148 km south

What H means

H is the label for an ordinary chondrite with high total iron; no petrologic type is recorded. Bethlehem has the smallest recovered mass of the 13 H falls. The nearest other H fall is Avilez in Mexico, 3,336 km away. In date order among H falls, the one before Bethlehem is Avilez (1855, Mexico) and the one after is Otomi (1867, Japan).

Dark ticks: 13 H falls, median 695 g (dotted). Grey: all others.

Bethlehem in the United States’s record

In date order Bethlehem is number 18 (shared with a fall of the same year) of the 146 falls recorded in the United States, which run from 1807 to 2012. The fall recorded before Bethlehem in the United States is Petersburg (1855); the next is Harrison County (1859).

Bigger dots carry more recovered mass.

The 1850s

Bethlehem is one of 36 falls dated to the 1850s. Elsewhere, the record lists two other falls in 1859: Pampanga in the Philippines, Beuste in France.