Candace Kohl, a well-known meteorite hunter and asteroid specialist with an asteroid named after her, gave me a tour of her home and her collection of meteorites this weekend. I had a blast checking out all the different rocks from space, the moon and Mars, but these paintings on one wall were my favorite part of her collection.
Each of the four paintings shows a different interpretation of the Tunguska Event as described by eye witnesses. These were painted by Bill Hartmann, who also developed the most accepted working theory for the formation of the moon. The Tunguska Event is largely a mystery: in 1908 a huge explosion in the sky above Russia flattened and burned over 800 square miles of forest, but left no other traces behind. I thought it was pretty cool that the man solving the mystery of the moon's creation was also inspired enough by this mystery to paint it.
