Ensisheim meteorite

The Ensisheim meteorite is a stony meteorite that fell on 7 November 1492 into a wheat field outside the town of Ensisheim in Alsace, now in France. It weighed 127 kilograms when it fell. It is the oldest recorded European stony meteorite fall from which material is still preserved. King Maximilian and his advisers saw it as a good omen, and broadsheets of the day spread the news across Europe. The main mass can still be seen in Ensisheim's Musée de la Régence.

Its fall was seen and heard over a very wide area. A local magistrate stopped people breaking pieces off and kept the stone for King Maximilian, who took it as a good omen and ordered it to be kept in the church, suspended by a chain. The poet Sebastian Brant's illustrated broadsheets quickly spread the news across Europe.

Ensisheim matters to the history of meteorite science as the oldest recorded and still preserved stony meteorite fall in Europe. The 15th-century broadsheets and chronicles show how people viewed stones falling from the sky. The main mass is on display in a museum, and pieces are kept in other museums for research and comparison.

It has a hardness of 5–7 on the Mohs scale. It can scratch glass; a steel knife scratches it only with difficulty. Its specific gravity is 2.99–3.43 g/cm³.

Its best-known localities: Ensisheim, Alsace, France.

A stone with a dark grey to black outside and a light grey interior; because many pieces were broken off over time, today's main mass is irregular in shape. It is an LL6 ordinary chondrite: its chondrules are largely blurred by heating. Only museum records and laboratory analysis can show that a piece really comes from Ensisheim.

On the “street to diamond” value ladder it sits on step 6 of nine: Fine ornamental and collector stone. Ensisheim's value is historical and scientific: it is one of the oldest recorded European stony falls and is still preserved. The main mass is in a museum, and institutions such as the National Museum of Natural History in Paris hold pieces too. A piece's value depends on documentation that it comes from this historic fall.

King Maximilian and his advisers, about to campaign against France, took the meteorite as a good omen, and Sebastian Brant presented it in his broadsheets as a sign of the king's coming victories over France. At Maximilian's wish the stone was kept in Ensisheim's church “suspended by a chain”, where it stayed for centuries. There is no scientific basis for the idea that a meteorite foretells the outcome of a war; the belief was used in the political propaganda of the time. Scientifically, Ensisheim is an ordinary LL chondrite broken off an asteroid. This section reports beliefs; it is not health information. There is no scientific evidence for these claims and no stone replaces medical treatment.