SEARCH FOR METEORITE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 March 1939, Page 6

SEARCH FOR METEORITE

INVESTIGATIONS IN RUSSIA. A PEASANT’S EXPERIENCE. A spherical meteor appeared over Stalinabad, the capital of Soviet Tadjikistan, as the inhabitants were having dinner. Shooting off showers of sparks and leaving a trail of luminous vapor, it crossed the horizon and vanished behind the neighbouring mountain range. An instant later there was a loud rumble and a pillar of flame shot upward, radiating a bluish light which illumined the whole city. The local astronomical observatory is organising a search for the meteorite, which is believed to have struck the earth somewhere in Eadjikistan, west of Stalinabad.

Astronomers who view the sight believed it to be the largest since the famous Tungus meteor, which was seen 'all over Russia An 1908, shortly before it landed in a wild part of Siberia. The exact locality of the fall of the Tungus meteor was never ascertained until this summer, when it was discovered by airmen, who made an extensive photographic survey of the region, revealing how the forest was felled within a radius of fifteen miles of the point of impact. Next year an overland expedition will attempt to reach the site. Cf late many meteorites have been found in the Soviet Union. The largest was in White Russia, and weighed 6001 b. Recently a peasant near Orenburg was watching a falling meteor. It burst in the air and a disc-shaped fragment landed and bounded a few yards from where he stood. These and other finds have been added to the collection of meteorites at the Geological Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Started in the middle of the eighteenth century, the collection now numbers 1103 exhibits.