Stannern meteorite shower

Stannern meteorite shower fell on May 22 1808 into the Moravian village Stonařov (in German "Stannern"), in today's Czech Republic. The fall was witnessed by many and dozens of fragments were soon collected by naturalist Karl Schreibers. The meteorites were classified into the HED meteorite clan (possibly from asteroid 4 Vesta) and eucrite sub-group.

The meteorite shower occurred on Sunday 22th May, 1808, shortly before 06:00. The meteorites fell into an elliptic area oriented north-south with height about 12.5 km and width 4.8 km, into Stonařov and neighbouring villages (among them Otín, Rosice, Cerekvička, Dlouhá Brtnice, Hladov, Stará Říše). The event was witnessed by people on their way into the church. According to the local chronicle the fall took about 8 minutes and the number of meteorites was estimated to 200-300. No person was injured and no property was damaged.

Shortly after the fall Dr. Karl Schreibers, director of natural science collections in Vienna, arrived to the place, organized search for the fragments and thoroughly documented the event. Most of the 66 found fragments weight between 32 - 48 g with the largest one having over 6 kg. Total recovered weight was about 52 kg.

The stones found their way into museums all over the world. The largest fragment is stored in the Museum of Natural History in Vienna.

Literature

* Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry and the Arts, volume XXV, 1810, published by William Nicholson: "Analysis of the aerolite that fell on Stannern, Moravia", article by Louis Nicolas Vauquelin, p. 54-59. [http://books.google.cz/books?id=zhMAAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA54&lpg=PA54&ots=L0iQr4L7-E&sig=Z6geh4viPyAuEWNb9Cs6I9QrARA&hl=en#PPR13,M1 Google books scan]
* For the 200th anniversary of the event [http://muzeum.ji.cz/ Museum] of Vysočina Region in Jihlava published proceedings about the Stonařov meteorite. The document contains, among others, contemporary records and complete list of places keeping the fragments.

External links

* [http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/virtual-wonders/vrmeteorite2.html Photo of one of the fragments]
* [http://www.meteoritestudies.com/protected_STANNERN.HTM Composition of the meteorite]
* [http://press.avcr.cz/aktuality.php?id=220 Short information about the event] (in Czech, website of Czech Academy of Sciences)
* [http://denik.hvezdarna.cz/2006/08/kam-padaj-meteority.html List of the most known meteorites on area of the Czech Republic] (in Czech)