You can see the ballistic streaks of melting metal coming in hot at Mach 36… a glorious moment frozen in place… the fiery end to a long arc from the asteroid belt.
When the Sikhote-Alin meteorite hit Eastern Siberia at 10:38am in 1947, it was brighter than the sun and left a 20 mile long smoke trail in the sky that took hours to dissipate.
This 3.3 kilogram fragment was probably cold-worked from a violent impact explosion with the atmosphere 3.5 miles up. It is octahedrite, composed of 93% iron, 5.9% nickel, 0.42% cobalt, 0.46% phosphorus, and 0.28% sulfur, with trace amounts of germanium and iridium.
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