PARAGOULD-In the early morning hours of Feb. 17, 1930, three sonic booms shook the town of Paragould as a large meteorite plunged to the ground just outside town.
The meteorite landed in two pieces about three miles apart with the larger landing southwest of Finch Road in a field and the smaller landing behind Finch Baptist Church.
The event came to be known as the Paragould meteorite.
Kenneth Renshaw, a former Paragould resident who now lives in Piggott, has written a detailed account of the meteorite that will soon be published in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture.
Renshaw, is a part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solar System Ambassador Program and as well as being a member of the Saturn Observatory Campaign.
"I go around to schools and put on presentations," Renshaw said.
The ambassador program is a group of 459 volunteer and astronomers.
It was organized in 1999 as a part of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The Ambassador Program deals with NASA unmanned interplanetary and earth orbiting vehicles.
As a volunteer, Renshaw is trained online and by telephone by the actual engineers and astronomers who build the spacecraft.
The large part of the meteorite weighed over 800 pounds and measured 16 by 41 inches and made a nine foot hole, Renshaw said.
"At that time it was the largest to ever be recovered after being seen falling to the earth," he said. "The smaller one weighed 73 pounds."
Now the larger piece, which has been kept in the University of Arkansas Library in Fayetteville since 1988, is now the second largest to be recovered after it was seen falling.
It also is the fourth largest stony meteorite in the world as well as the third largest impact specimen, Renshaw said.
It was originally purchased for $3,600 by Harvey H. Nininger, a meteorite collector from Kansas.
Nininger eventually sold it for $6,200 to the President of the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History, Stanley Field, who donated it to the museum.
The smaller piece is displayed in Washington DC in the National Museum.
According to Renshaw, the larger was found on the farm of Joe H. Fletcher four weeks after the impact by W.H. Hodges.
It was removed by a team of horses and five men after three hours.
Renshaw said although two large pieces were found, there still could be another out there.
"Since there were three sonic booms heard, there could be another piece," he said.
The meteorite was seen streaking across the sky in places like Indiana, Illinois and Kansas.
It is made up of LL5 Chrondrite which Renshaw said is unique because it is almost totally stone.
Meteorites are typically made of iron or stony iron, he said.
Renshaw said the meteor most likely came from the asteroid belt.
"The asteroid belt is between Mars and Jupiter," he said. "It was going faster than the speed of sound and it could have gone as fast as 35 minutes per second."
Renshaw said the direction of the earth was traveling at the time brought it in direct contact with the asteroid.
"It came in from the northwest," he said.
Portions of the meteorite are stored in such places as the Smithsonian Institute, Harvard University and Max Planck Institute in Germany.
Renshaw said he has been fascinated with outer space since he was young.
"I got my first telescope when I was sixteen," he said.
A music instructor by trade, Renshaw has been an amateur astronomer since 1973 and says he also has always enjoyed photography.
Currently, he is the owner of Renshaw Studios in Piggott.
His studio specializes in photography, piano instruction, tuning and repair.
He is especially interested in his work with the Saturn Observatory Campaign.
"It focuses on the Cassini Spacecraft," he said.
Cassini is on a four year mission to Saturn to learn about the origins of our solar system.
It has already taken the most detailed pictures of the Saturn rings.
