FALL OF REVELSTOKE STONY METEORITE, CANADA

Name: REVELSTOKE.

The place of fall or discovery: 64 km northwest of the city of Revelstoke, British Co­lumbia, Canada; φ = 51°20' N, λ = 118°57' W.

Date of fall or discovery: FALL, March 31, 1965, 21 hrs. 47' Pacific Standard Time.

Class and type: STONY, carbonaceous chondrite type I.

Number of individual specimens: 4 (two recovered).

Total weight: About 1 gr. recovered.

Circumstances of the fall or discovery: An extremely bright bolide giving off sparks was observed to travel for 100 km. (8 seconds) at 15° inclination; blue white at high altitudes, it exploded at 30 km. with a brilliant flash of white light, and travelled onward as two or more distinct reddish fireballs which went out at an altitude of 12 km. over a very wild and desolate range of glaciated mountains and spruce forest. Violent detonations were heard up to 130 km. from the fall area and were recorded on four seismo­graphs as much as 400 km. distant.  Search by plane and helicopter immediately after the fall was unsuccessful, but two guides and trappers living ten km. south of the fall area in the course of their spring trapping operations for beaver, observed two impact areas on the ice of a small lake, and ano­ther two in the snow of the neighbouring forest. These small fragments lay directly along the trace of trajectory plotted by Drs. J. Galt and E. Argyle of the Dominion Radio Astro Physical Laboratory at Pen­ticton, British Columbia, and L. Bayrock of the Research Council of Alberta, Edmonton.  Two of the samples of disaggregated meteorite were collected, the other two were lost on melting of the lake and snow. Identification was made at the, Uni­versity of Alberta and confirmed by the Geological Survey of Canada, Ottawa.  Search for the main mass or masses is continuing, using air photographs taken shortly after the fall and heli­copters to support ground search.

Source: Report of Prof. R. E. Folinsbee (Edmonton, Canada) in a letter, VII.26 1965.