Iron, coarse octahedrite – IIAB Maritime Territory, Siberia, Russia

This engaging meteorite is from the biggest meteorite shower of the last several thousand years. Its journey began 320 million years ago, when a giant iron mass broke-off from its parent body in the asteroid belt and wandered through space until it encountered Earth on 12 February 1947. Upon slamming into the atmosphere it began to break apart and created a fireball brighter than the Sun as it sailed over the Sikhote-Alin Mountains in Siberia. The shockwaves from the low altitude explosion of the main mass collapsed chimneys, shattered windows and uprooted trees. A 33 kilometer long smoke trail persisted in the sky for several hours, and many of the resulting meteorites produced impact craters as large as 26 meters—with nearly 200 craters having been catalogued. A famous painting of the event by artist and eye-witness P. I. Medvedev was reproduced as a postage stamp issued by the Soviet government in 1957 to commemorate what many likened to what was seemingly the end of the world. There are two types of Sikhote-Alin meteorites: jagged and twisted shrapnel-like specimens (the result of the aforementioned low-altitude explosion of the main mass), and the more sought-after smooth, gently scalloped specimens that broke free at a much higher altitude and formed the aerodynamic thumb prints known as “regmaglypts”). This is an example of the latter variety, and is a superior example from the largest meteorite shower since the dawn of civilization.