[meteorite-list] Djati-Pengilon: did it fell into a river (no, probably not!)

From: Marco Langbroek <marco.langbroek_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:04:45 2004
Message-ID: <003b01c1f3a3$2f1971a0$6fda86c2_at_latitude>

Bernd wrote:

> And there is the Djati-Pengilon H6 chondrite which fell into the
Alastoeva river.

Hi Bernd and others,

That Djati-Pengilon fell into the river Alastoeva, is an apocryphal story
that as far as I understand is simply incorrect. I have been doing some
library research on meteorites from the former Dutch East Indies (now
Indonesia) lately for the Dutch language version of my website (which is
more elaborate than the English language version).

Alastoewa is not a river, it is/was a kampong (hamlet). It is not too far
from the river Sondé, as mentioned by Verbeek (1886). Verbeek's original
(Dutch language) account of the fall (Verbeek 1886) makes clear that the
meteorite fell on land. The 166 kg meteorite struck an impact pit 3 meters
deep. On March 23, four days after the fall, the stone was dug out from the
impact pit by a mr. F. Kläring, who (following months of deliberation, as he
illegally took it from government property) handed it over to the Dutch East
Indies government one and a half years later.
I guess that at one point a mistranslation of the Dutch language account has
happened, during which the nearness of the Sondé river as mentioned by
Verbeek (who mentions the Sondé river as a means to better describe the
geographic location of the hamlet in which the meteorite fell) has given
rise to the incorrect story that it fell into the river, with the name of
the place being transformed into the name of this alledged 'river'.

There are more things in the 'blue book' account of Djati-Pengilon (and a
number of other Indonesian meteorites as well - I actually just wrote a
letter about those to Monica Grady this week!) which are incorrect. The fall
time of Djati-Pengilon, for example, was not 16:30h, but 4h to 4:30h a.m.,
early in the morning and not in the afternoon (see again Verbeek 1886).

best wishes,

- Marco

reference: R.D.M. Verbeek (1886): "De METEORIET van Djati-Pengilon (Java)".
Jaarboek van het Mijnwezen in Nederlandsch Oost-Indië, vol. 15
(wetenschappelijk gedeelte), p. 145-171.
Received on Sat 04 May 2002 03:20:04 PM PDT