Sikhote-Alin

A brief description:

Type: iron meteorite, octahedrite class

Meteorite impact site: Russia, Primorsky Krai

The time of the meteorite fall: 1947

Date of discovery: 1947

History of study

The Sikhote-Alin meteorite is one of the few large meteorites the fall of which observed numerous eyewitnesses. At 10:30 am, February 12, 1947, a bright fireball swept across the sky over Primorye area. During the fall of the meteorite, people could hear a deafening roar at a distance of 300 km. The meteorite exploded in the air over the taiga forest, and fell in a form of a meteor shower over an area of 35 km2. Pilots of the Far Eastern Geological Administration discovered the crash site, which represented a crater field of numerous funnels. The depth of the largest funnel reached 6 meters, and the surrounding trees were cut with metal fragments. The artist Pyotr Medvedev observed the fall of the meteorite and created the famous painting inspired by it. A postage stamp based on the painting was issued in the USSR in 1957.

General information

The Sikhote-Alin meteorite is one of the ten largest meteorites ever found and is the largest among those whose fall has been recorded in the history of observations.
Regarding chemical composition, it consists of 94% iron, 5.5% nickel; the rest is cobalt, carbon, chlorine, phosphorus, sulfur. The structure of the meteorite is rough, without pronounced Widmanstätten lines. The total mass of fragments is estimated at 60-100 tons, about 27 tons of which were collected, including fragments from 350 to 1745 kg.
The place of origin of the meteorite is the asteroid belt. One of the collisions led to the formation of an elliptical orbit, which eventually crossed the Earth’s orbit. There are two types of the Sikhote-Alin meteorite fragments: individual and fragmentary. Individual fragments were formed during the meteorite crushing in dense layers of the atmosphere. A rounded shape and a smooth melting crust covered with regmaglypts is characteristic of them. Regmaglipts are circular depressions on the surface of a meteorite, similar to finger dents in soft clay. Fragments of the second type have an irregular, twisted shape with pointed, torn edges. Usually their surface does not have traces of melting. This is the result of the explosion of meteorite fragments upon the impact with the ground.