Star of India

The Star of India is a 563.35 carat star sapphire, the largest gem of its kind on public display anywhere. The stone is a milky grayish blue cabochon, polished but unfaceted, and it is unusual in showing a six-rayed star on both sides. The milky body color and the star effect, called asterism, both come from fine traces of the mineral rutile. Tiny rutile fibers aligned in a three-fold pattern inside the gem reflect incoming light into the star. It is displayed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, in the museum's halls of gems and minerals.

The sapphire was mined in Sri Lanka, then known as Ceylon. Mineralogist and Tiffany gem expert George Frederick Kunz acquired it around 1900 while assembling a gem collection for financier J.P. Morgan, built for exhibit at the Paris Exposition of 1900. Morgan later donated the Star of India to the American Museum of Natural History along with the rest of the collection.

On October 29, 1964, Jack Roland Murphy, known as Murph the Surf, Allan Kuhn, and Roger Clark stole the gem with other famous stones from the museum. The sapphire was the only gem in the hall wired to an alarm, and its battery was dead. In January 1965 Kuhn led authorities to a locker at a Miami Trailways bus station, where the uninsured Star of India was recovered.