The NHM recently refurbished the Mineral Gallery, opening "The Vault" - a display designed to showpiece the best terrestrial and meteoritic mineral specimens. I thought I'd go take a look..
The famous entrance hall to the NHM
Entrance to the Mineral Gallery and Vault...
...and turning left into the gallery. The Vault is at the far end, middle-left of shot. The man with the child in the red top isn't a ghost - these are collaged shots :)
A panorama taken from around the middle of the gallery. The new Vault is at left, the entrance (pictured above) at right.
Just outside the Vault, to either side of the entrance, there are a couple of large cases with the standard explainers of the different kinds of meteorites, their origin, etc.
The entrance to the Vault. It's designed to look like a movie-style bank vault, with big steel doors on the exterior. Inside the most valuable exhibits are displayed on glass-fronted safes.
Some classy specimens from inside the Vault - see below
So much for the display space... what about the meteorites?
A very, very...
...very large (approx 650 kg) specimen of Campo, or Otumpa to use the synonym given here.
An etched slice of Coolac from one of the display cases in the main gallery...
...and a few pieces of Steinbach from the same case. There may be more specimens hidden in the main gallery, but I didn't find any.
A nice Henbury individual from the display outside the Vault.
Laguna Manantiales etched slice, do.
A lovely fist-sized cut of the Johnstown diogenite, do.
A big individual Stannern eucrite, do.
Springwater, do.
This piece of Tenham is about twice the size of a man's head!
Wabar end-cut, etched, do.
Wellman (a) H5 chondrite, do.
And then there are the Crown Jewels, stored in the Vault itself...
A piece of Cold Bokkeveld. The small test tube contains microscopic interstellar diamonds
Beautiful slice of Vigarano, showing thousands of pristine chondrules and big CAIs
This slice of Imilac is something like 1m x 1m along its longest sides. It's quite beautiful and is backlit to show the translucency of the olivine crystals
No display would be complete without some planetary exhibits... Here is a huge slice of DaG400 anorthositic lunar breccia. Makes my 0.2g slice look kind of pathetic in comparison :)
And here is a piece of Nahkla about the size of a child's fist. Difficult to photograph as it's harshly illuminated in its own display safe.