National Museum, Prague
A historic collection rich in Czech falls, including Příbram, the first meteorite whose orbit was worked out from photographs.
Key facts
- Where
- Prague, Czechia
- Kind
- Museum
- Visiting
- Public galleries
The National Museum in Prague, founded in 1818, holds the Czech national meteorite collection. Bohemia and Moravia have a long record of falls, and the museum has material from many of them.
The most important scientifically is Příbram, of which the museum holds pieces, which fell on 7 April 1959. Its fireball was photographed by two stations of the Czech fireball camera network, which allowed astronomers at the Ondřejov Observatory to calculate the path through the atmosphere, find the stones and work out the orbit around the Sun. It was the first time this had been done for any meteorite, and the orbit reached out into the asteroid belt, proving where such stones come from. Příbram is an H5 ordinary chondrite.
Czech fireball science has continued since: the stones of Benešov, a fall of 1991, were found only years later by re-analysing the camera records.
Highlights
Related pages
Opening times, what is on display and access to research collections change over time, so check with the institution before you visit.