On the morning of February 12, 1947 at 10:38 local time, a huge fireball as bright as the sun appeared in the sky near the Sikhote-Alin mountain range in the Maritime Province of Russia. The cause of this phenomenon was an iron meteoroid weighing almost three hundred tons traveling through the atmosphere at an estimated 45,000 miles per hour! The resulting atmospheric pressures on the mass caused it to essentially explode at an altitude of about 18,000 feet and pieces of various sizes from small particles up to several tons struck the frozen tundra in a "strewn field" covering some 1.2 square miles in a heavily forested area. Named after the mountains nearby, this became known as the "Sikhote-Alin fall" and was one of the most witnessed and well-documented such events in modern history.

 

The meteorites that were recovered from the "strewn field" took three distinctive shapes: 

Regmaglypted:              

Several pieces broke off the main mass during its passage through the atmosphere and the process of "ablation" caused the formation of regmaglypts (commonly called "thumbprints" because they look like thumbprints made in soft clay).  This was due to the fact that some of the imbeded minerals (for example "troilite" an iron sulfide) had a lower melting point than the surrounding material. As this material melted, it was swept away in the slipstream forming the indentations and dissipating the heat. The ablated material vaporized and formed a dust train behind the main mass several miles long. It was estimated that the vaporized material in the dust train itself weighed as much as 200 tons! An estimated 70 tons of the remaining mass made it to Earth. An interesting fact about regmaglypts is that their size is proportional to the size of the  meteorite ... the smaller the meteorite, the smaller the regmaglypts that appear on them.   Regmaglypted specimens are priced from $1.25 to $1.50 per gram.

 

 

 

Shrapnel:                      

Due to it mass and velocity, the atmospheric pressures on the object were so tremendous that at an altitude of just under 20,000 feet it exploded catastrophically into thousands of pieces of varying size and shape. Shrapnel is so named because the pieces are torn and twisted and look like fragments from an exploded bomb. The remnants of the explosion by now had decelerated to terminal velocity falling under the force of Earth's gravity and the larger pieces formed craters as they struck the frozen tundra, again shattering into more pieces of shrapnel.   Shrapnel pieces are priced from $0.50 to $0.75 per gram.

 

  

 

Sculpted:                       

Some of the pieces were cast off the main body as molten lumps of iron and their passage through the atmosphere molded them into beautiful and elegant forms.  Sculpted pieces are priced at $1.25 per gram.

 

 

On the following pages, you will find an excellent selection of high quality Sikhote-Alin meteorites for sale including regmaglypted, shrapnel and sculpted. Each of these specimens was hand selected and chosen for their high quality, uniqueness and beauty. Please bookmark our site to find us again easily.

SIKHOTE-ALIN
METEORITES FOR SALE