Sikhote-Alin Meteorite

IRON SHRAPNEL FROM A LOW-ALTITUDE EXPLOSION

On February 12, 1947, a large meteor traveling approximately 9 miles per second soared across the Sikhote-Alin mountains in Russia's Far East, northeast of Vladivostok. Observed by many eyewitnesses, the "fireball moved from north to south and, at 10:38 a.m. local time, fragmented in the Earth's atmosphere. The debris covered an elliptical area of 1.6 square kilometers on the snow covered western spurs of the Sikhote Alin mountains."

The impact site was first discovered by a pair of pilots flying over the mountains; they had witnessed a meteor the day prior and had good reason to believe that the felled trees and craters they observed from above were the result. Reporting their find once they reached the town of Khabarovsk, the Geological Society of Khabarovsk organized a search party, eventually finding dozens of craters in an area of destroyed forest.

On April 27, a second expedition arrived from the Soviet Academy of Sciences, including the Soviet geologist E.L. Krinov. Krinov had cut his teeth working on the Tunguska Event impact site, and whereas the first group only found shrapnel-like meteorites like the one seen here, Krinov and his team found unfragmented pieces covered in thumbprint-like regmaglypts and bearing a fusion crust (see Lot 71). Whereas the gently scalloped specimens broke free of the main mass in the upper atmosphere, the jagged and twisted shrapnel-like specimens like the one seen here resulted from a low-altitude explosion of the meteor.

REFERENCES:

Meteoritical Bulletin Entry for Sikhote-Alin

Norton, O. Richard. Rocks from Space: Meteorites and Meteorite Hunters. Missoula: Mountain Press, 1998, 100-109.