6H54+6Q Shchekotsk, Belarus
In the settlement of Chekutsk in the Ivanovsky district of the Brest region, on August 25, a commemorative sign of the Struve Geodetic Arc was solemnly unveiled.
The geodetic measurement point in Chekutsk is especially interesting. It was excavated only a few years ago. A cube with a cross-shaped measurement point, dated 1825, lay buried about a meter underground. According to specialists, when measurements were conducted in the Ivanovsky district from one Arc point to another over a distance of about 12 km, despite temporary changes in the terrain relief, the difference between modern meridian measurements and the old ones was less than 3.5 cm.
Since August 25, 2005, a black stele about 1.5 meters tall, made of Karelian gabbro-diabase, has marked the Struve Arc point near the settlement of Chekutsk. The stele is topped with a 100-kilogram sphere — a symbol of the Earth, with the outline of Belarus applied on it, through which the Struve Arc line passes, and a mark indicating the location of the commemorative sign — "Chakutsk." The stele was produced by the Ivanovo limited liability company "Eurostone."
The Struve Arc, once known as the "Russian" and later the "Russo-Scandinavian Meridian Arc," is one of UNESCO's World Heritage monuments. The Arc consists of 265 triangulation points, where measurements were conducted from 1816 to 1852, allowing the precise determination of the Earth's size and shape.
The reference points of this triangulation network were marked in various ways on the ground: hollows carved into rocks, iron crosses, stone pyramids, or specially installed obelisks. Often they were marked with sandstone bricks laid at the bottom of a pit; sometimes it was a granite cube with a cavity filled with lead, placed in a pit with boulders.
During the eight-year project to include the Struve Arc on the UNESCO list, special search and geodetic work was undertaken in each country to locate the original points. All information from all the countries of the Struve Arc was collected, structured, and standardized.
Not all original points were found during the special search and geodetic work carried out in recent years with active cooperation from scientists of the interested countries, and many were found to be heavily damaged. Therefore, only the best-preserved points — a total of 34 — were included in the World Heritage site.
Sources:
http://www.gototrip.com/publications/geodezicheskaya-duga-struve
http://ivanovo.edu.by/ru/main.aspx?guid=14421
