Earliest recorded European meteorite. Medieval manuscript page which is the first to record a meteorite (shown in woodcut image at top). It fell near

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Earliest recorded European meteorite. Medieval manuscript page which is the first to record a meteorite (shown in woodcut image at top). It fell near Ensisheim, a town in Alsace which is now in France, on the morning of 7 November 1492. The \thunderstone\" was interpreted as a sign of God's anger. It is thought that the meteorite weighed almost 130 kilogrammes (kg), of which a 55 kg mass remains. The meteorite was a stony chondrite type; chondrites make up about 86% of the solar system's meteorites. About 500 meteorites hit Earth each year, but most fall in the sea or remote regions & go unrecorded. Meteorites were not widely accepted as having an extraterrestrial origin until 1803."

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Size: 3371px × 4897px
Photo credit: © D. VAN RAVENSWAAY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: artwork, astronomy, chondrite, cosmology, earliest, early, ensisheim, european, medieval, meteorite, printing, recor, record, thunderstone, woodcut