Dr. Nagy I. Zoltán szerk.: Fragmenta Mineralogica Et Palaentologica 6. 1975. (Budapest, 1975)
Fragm. Min. et Pal. 6. 1975. Physical Aspect^ of the Meteorite-Shower of Knahina on the Basis of a Map Constructed hy Prof. J. SZABÓ László BENDEFY Budapest ABSTRACT: The author reexamined the circumstances of the meteoriteshower of Káahina (1866). He established that after the meteoric explosions the balance of the meteoric bodies becomes disarranged. In such cases the meteoric body' s masse didn't to fill the wholly area of the enveloping ellipse, but only the area of the direction line. In case of the Knahina in the western third part of the ellipse area, no fragment of an essential sizehasbeen recovered. On the 9-th June, 1866, about 05 p.m. , "a fire ball appeared high in the sky" to the inhabitants of the village of Knahina, County Ung (SZABÓ 1867). Though "on the azure background of the sky no cloud was visible with the exceptions of some Altocumuli, the fire-ball was emitting, in spite of the full brilliancy of the summer Sun, a very strong light which has been seen by several thousands of labourers who were tilling the earth on this Saturday afternoon." (SZABÓ 1868.) These are the introducing words to the description of the shower of meteorites at Knahina, given by József SZABÓ the celebrated one-time Professor of Geology in the University of Budapest, and secretary of the Comission for Mathematics and Sciences of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. After this préambule, SZABÓ states the following: According to the evidence given by eye-witnesses, the fire-ball appeared in the western sky and continued its path in an easterly direction. Among the data collected by the Academy of Sciences, the westernmost locality at which the fire-ball has been observed, was there town of Liptószentmiklós. Starting from this point, there is available a continuous set of observations throught the counties Szepes, Sáros and Zemplén to the northwestern corner of the county Ung. In every case ther is a statement in these documents concerning the direction at which the phenomenon was sighted in the various villages. In addition, it appears from these documents, which are those of the villages, where all of the observers had seen the phenomenon to appear at the zenithal point. Plotting these localities on a map, we are obtaining a line having the length of 28 Austrian miles (i.e. 112 200 fathoms of Vienna, that is 212, 3 kilometres), directed from the West to the East. • On the northwestern end of this line, i.e. above Liptószentmiklós, was the highest observed position of the fire-ball (Fig. 1.), while at the southeastern end, at Kaahiiïa, it hit the earth in an explosed state (Fig. 2. ).
