Ensisheim (meteorite)

Ensisheim
Ensisheim meteorite in the town's museum
Type	Chondrite
Class	Ordinary chondrite
Group	LL6
Country	France
Region	Ensisheim
Observed fall	Yes
Fall date	7 November 1492
Found date	7 November 1492
TKW	127 kg (280 lb)

The Ensisheim meteorite is a stony meteorite observed to fall on November 7, 1492 in a wheat field outside the walled town of Ensisheim in then Alsace, Further Austria (now France). The meteorite can still be seen in Ensisheim's museum, the sixteenth-century Musée de la Régence.

The meteorite is an LL6 ordinary chondrite, weighing 127 kilograms (280 lb); it was described as triangular in shape, and it created a 1-metre (3 ft 3 in) deep hole upon impact.

The fall of the meteorite through the Earth's atmosphere was observed as a fireball for a distance of up to 150 kilometres from where it eventually landed.

Sebastian Brant (1458–1521), satirist and author of "Das Narrenschiff" described the meteorite and its fall in the poem, "Loose Leaves Concerning the Fall of the Meteorite".

Residents of the walled town and nearby farms and villages gathered at the location to raise the meteorite from its impact hole and began removing pieces of the meteorite.

A local magistrate interfered with the destruction of the stone, in order to preserve the object for King Maximilian, the son of reigning Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick III. A piece of the meteorite was sent to Cardinal Piccolomini (later Pope Pius III) at the Vatican along with a number of related verses written by Brant.

Brant created broadsheets in Latin and German with a poem about the meteorite describing it as an omen. The fall is also described in Folio 257 of the Nuremberg Chronicle.