SIKHOTE ALIN IIAB METEORITE INDIVIDUAL
Fall: February 12th, 1947
Latitude: 46 Deg 9 Min North
Longitude: 134 Deg 39 MinEast
Maritime Territory, RUSSIA
Name: Sikhote-Alin
Class: iron, coarsest octahedrite (9mm), IIAB
Country: Maritime Territory, RUSSIA
Date: Fall: February 12th, 1947, 10:38 hrs UT
TKW: + 23,000 kg
This meteorite weighs 12.15 g and comes in a 70 x 70 x 20 mm membrane display box as shown.
A shower of fireballs fell in the thick forest in the Sikhote-Alin Mountains, 25 miles from Novopoltavka, Maritime Province, producing 106 impact holes, the largest 28 m across, over an area of 1100 x 660 m, and many fragments, up to 300 kg in weight, totalling over 23,000kg were found scattered inside and outside the craters.
Radiometric dating of the meteorite itself suggests an age of about 4.5 billion years, suggesting it was formed at the very beginning of the Solar System, and which makes it among the oldest material known to exist ( the oldest rocks being only half its age!). The metal of the meteorite is crystallised internally in a beautiful crisscross array, known as the Widmanstätten Pattern which is unique to iron meteorites, and develops because the meteorite has cooled from a molten state in zero gravity at a rate of only a few degrees per million years.
This surely is the most known and distributed iron meteorite in the world.
We hope you will enjoy owning this unique piece of our Solar System, your own Space Traveller, from way out there.
The Fall of the Sikhote Alin Meteorite
Painting by Soviet artist Medvedev
