Blog:   Royal Observatory Greenwich     Posted:   Sunday 06th of April 2008 3:04 PM

Prof. Mark Bailey's (Armagh Observatory) public lecture at NAM 2008 celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska event, when a large meteoroid exploded 5 miles above a remote region of Siberia.

The eyewitness reports of the event are, quite frankly, terrifying.

...the sky split in two and fire appeared high and wide over the forest. The split in the sky grew larger, and the entire Northern side was covered with fire. At that moment I became so hot that I couldn't bear it, as if my...