L6
TKW 738 grams. Observed fall 26 April 1962, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.
  
jnmczurich writes:
Kiel, L6 chondrite, Fa 25 mol%, Fetot 22.50%, no further mineralogical details available.
Fall date was on April 26, 1962, 1.45 pm local time (12:45 hrs UT)
Pic 1: The Kiel meteorite was special, because there was no fireball witnessed (or reported), no typical sound phenomena was heard (or reported). The single mass of 737.6g penetrated a tin roof of a house in Kiel-Pries, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.
The circumstances of the fall, appearance and the mineralogical attribution can be found in this article: W. Schreyer: Der Meteorit von Kiel – Fall, Aussehen und Zuordnung, Natur und Museum, 94 (3), pages 118-125 (1964).
Pics 2 and 3: uncut Kiel chondrite
In April 1966, four years after the fall happened, the tin panel was still a part of the roof of the meteor target house in Kiel-Pries. The former German mineral and meteorite collector Mr. Arno Lengowski interviewed the owner of house and was told the following story (translated from German):
I (the house owner) was having lunch with my co-worker when we were startled by a loud bang at 1:45 p.m. We linked the noise to a car driving by and I said: It's going to be dangerous to cross the street soon. There a stone bounces off a car and it probably flies onto your head. That was the end of the matter for us and when we went back to our work after lunch we didn't think about it anymore.
It wasn't until I came back from milking in the late afternoon that I saw the roof. Well, there's a hole. How did that get in there? Under the roof, a batten had also broken through and a black stone about the size of a fist lay unrolled on the floor. Now I remembered the bang at about noon and it was clear to me that I had an extraterrestrial visitor. A meteor hit my house. I then called the police and reported: My roof was hit by a meteorite. They declared that they were not responsible for this and referred me to the University of Kiel. Some days later, a few gentlemen came to inspect the hole of the meteorite passage. One climbed a tree and took a picture of the punctured roof with a telephoto lens.
Pic 4: after some discussion A. Lengowski offered to repair the damaged tin roof panel by replacing it with a similar panel. The house owner agreed and the tin roof panel came into the possession of A. Lengowski for some years. The whole story, written by A. Lengowski, was published in a small and simple xerox booklet "Meteor – Zeitschrift für Meteoritenkunde", issue no. 2/1989, pages 20 to 22.
Later, the tin roof panel was given to the University of Kiel (unverified information).
Pic 5: the Kiel main mass is still 323.8 g and belongs to the Christian-Albrecht-Universität zu Kiel (information taken from Metbase 7.2)
Pics 6, 7 and 8: the shown 7.7g fragment slice of the Kiel chondrite is in my collection of meteorites since summer 1990.
Photo credits:
Pic 1, 2 and 3: W. Schreyer (mentioned above)
Pic 4: A. Lengowski (mentioned above)
Pic 5: Museum der Christian-Albrecht-Universität zu Kiel |