Pyotr Medvedev
The painter who watched the 1947 Sikhote-Alin fireball from his window and sketched it as it happened.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Russian
- Field
- Artist
Pyotr Ivanovich Medvedev was an artist living in the village of Iman, now the town of Dalnerechensk, in the Russian Far East. At about 10.30 on the morning of 12 February 1947 he was sitting by his window when a dazzling fireball crossed the sky, brighter than the Sun, leaving a thick trail of smoke behind it.
Medvedev began sketching at once. His drawing, and the painting he made from it, showed the fireball and its smoky trail as he had seen them. Because almost no one photographed the event, his picture became the best-known image of one of the largest meteorite falls in history.
The fireball broke apart high in the atmosphere, and a shower of iron fragments fell over the Sikhote-Alin mountains. Some pieces were large enough to dig craters, the largest about 26 metres across.
In 1957, for the tenth anniversary of the fall, the Soviet Union issued a postage stamp based on Medvedev's painting. His careful record shows how much an observant eyewitness can add to science: artists, like photographers, can preserve what instruments miss.
On the timeline
- 12 February 1947The Sikhote-Alin iron shower
See more
The Sikhote-Alin meteoriteSikhote-Alin crater