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

After breaking off from its parent body 320 million years ago, a giant iron mass wandered through interplanetary space at a cosmic velocity of approximately 15 miles per second until encountering Earth on 12 February 1947. Upon slamming into Earth’s atmosphere it began to break apart creating a fireball brighter than the Sun over the Sikhote-Alin Mountains in eastern Siberia. Sonic booms were heard at distances up to 300 kilometers from the impact point. On the ground, the resulting shock wave collapsed chimneys, shattered windows and uprooted trees. A 33 kilometer long smoke trail persisted in the sky for several hours. 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 the tenth anniversary of a day that observers likened to what was seemingly the end of the world. There are two distinctive types of Sikhote-Alin meteorites: shrapnel-like specimens resulting from the low-altitude explosion (see lot 15), and smooth, gently sculpted specimens resulting from a longer independent flight to Earth. This is an example of the latter and it boasts an affiliation with another elite club, it’s oriented: as a result of its distribution of mass and angle of entry into the atmosphere, this specimen experienced minimal tumbling and maintained the same axis of orientation during its plunge earthward. The smooth parabolic "heat shield" now seen was shaped during atmospheric penetration. The curve in evidence is the most efficient angle at which heat is deflected from an object undergoing atmospheric entry. As such, the heat shields for the first manned space capsules were inspired and emulated from oriented meteorites similar to the current offering.

Christie's would like to thank Dr. Alan E. Rubin at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Los Angeles for his assistance in preparing this catalog note.