The 1590 brass-and-silver astrolabe, worth around half a million euros (USD 750,000), turned up when an Italian collector discovered the piece was listed as missing and came forward to return it, Register Director Chris Marinello said.
Bengt Kylsberg of Skokloster Castle, north of Stockholm, said today he is glad to get the piece back and will put it on public display immediately.
German scholar Petra Schmidl of Bonn University, who studies astrolabes, describes them as a "two-dimensional model of the three-dimensional world." Known since ancient times, fewer than 2,000 astrolabes survive.
