$25,000 offered for chunk of meteor that flew over Missouri. Here’s where it might be

A gem and mineral museum is offering $25,000 to the first person who can find a chunk of the meteor spotting streaking across Midwestern skies this week.

Experts have an idea of where it might’ve landed.

The Maine Mineral and Gem Museum announced Tuesday that it will give the hefty payout to the first person who can find a kilogram of the meteor, according to a news release. The basketball-sized fireball blazed across the sky at 33,500 mph, McClatchy news group reported.

Video showed it trailing across the Missouri sky on Monday night. People also reported seeing it in Kansas, Oklahoma, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin and Nevada, McClatchy reported.

The museum in Maine, which is opening in December, wants to put a piece of the meteor on display,

“As fireball observations go, this one was significant — and a similarly significant reward awaits a lucky resident,” the museum wrote in the news release.

What’s a good price for meteorite, you ask?

According to New England Meteoritical Services, the going rate for the scarce commodity is between 50 cents and $5 per gram. But “truly scarce material” could go for over $1,000 per gram, the group said. With 1,000 grams in a kilogram, the museum’s rate is $25 per gram.

Not a bad payday — if you can find it.

Experts have educated guesses about where the meteor might have landed.

Ryan Ogliore, a physics professor at Washington University in St. Louis, studies meteorites and thinks this one landed near Wellsville, Missouri, KMOV reported. That’s about 90 miles northwest of St. Louis.

If you can find the meteor, you’d be in rare company. Only 24 meteorites have been found in Missouri since 1839, according to the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University.

Of those, just seven were found shortly after falling from the sky. The others were found after falling at an unknown time, according to the university.

Perhaps that’s why the museum is offering such a high price for the rare find.

“It’s an exciting opportunity to have a sample from a fireball seen one month before our official opening and we wish to enlist the public’s assistance,” museum Director Barbra Barrett said in the news release.

This story was originally published November 13, 2019 at 5:59 PM with the headline "$25,000 offered for chunk of meteor that flew over Missouri. Here’s where it might be."