Attractions of Luhova

Ilyinets astroblema is a meteorite crater that appeared 400 million years ago at the site of the fall of a cosmic body with a mass of about 40 million tons and a diameter of 250-300 meters.

Ilyinets Crater was first discovered in 1851 by Professor Kostyantyn Feofilaktov of Kyiv University, but it was not until 1973 that its cosmic origin was established ("astroblema" in Greek - "stellar wound", i.e. impact crater). Before that, it was believed that this was the mouth of an ancient volcano.

The exposed rocks have some external similarity with volcanic tuffs, but in fact they belong to zuvites - fragile rocks of impact-meteoric origin. For centuries, they were used by local residents to make millstones (this is where the name of the nearby village of Zhornyshche comes from).

The center of the crater with an inner diameter of 4 kilometers and an outer diameter of 10 kilometers is located between the villages of Luhova and Ivanki. You can see the Ilyinets crater in a cross-section just beyond the eastern outskirts of the village of Luhova, where quarries are located, in which local residents still extract building stone.