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Bruce Murray Space Image Library

The View from Kirensk

The View from Kirensk
The View from Kirensk On the morning of June 30, 1908, a large meteorite roughly 100 meters (330 feet) wide exploded above Tunguska, Siberia, leveling 2,000 square kilometers (770 square miles) of forest. No known pictures of the event exist, but Russian scientists collected eyewitness accounts from people up to hundreds of kilometers away. William Hartmann, a planetary scientist and prolific space artist, used these reports to paint reenactments of the event from different distances and perspectives. Here, a schoolteacher in Kirensk 400 kilometers (250 miles) southeast of ground zero shields her eyes, watching the meteorite just seconds before it exploded. William Hartmann