L'Aigle (L6)

3D Model

On 26 April 1803 a meteorite shower scattered several thousands of meteorites (together some 37 kg) near the town of L’Aigle in Normandy, France. It is an important event in the field of meteoritics as this fall undeniably underpinned the idea that rocks could fall from the sky. While the origins of meteorites (‘aerolites’) was still contested at the time, both the quantity of stones as well as the many eyewitnesses helped to firmly established the extra-terrestrial origins of meteorites. The event was studied by the French scientist Jean-Baptiste Biot and his conclusions supported the earlier propositions of German physicist Ernst Chladni made about the origins of meteorites. The L’Aigle meteorite classifies as an L6 ordinary chondrite [Bulletin of Meteoritics] (https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meteor/metbull.php?code=12434). This model was created for the Utrecht Meteorite Lab, a new virtual meteorite collection under development at Utrecht University.