Ireland's national museum is offering a cash reward to anyone who finds a meteorite that was spotted entering the atmosphere over the country last month.
The glowing fireball, which would have traveled at speeds of 100,000mph, was spotted shortly after midnight on Monday, August 22, by hundreds of people from Cork to Belfast and all along the east coast, according to David Moore, chairman of Astronomy Ireland.
"It looked like an extremely bright shooting star that was rocketing across the sky for a few seconds before it fell to earth," he said.
But unlike the misleading image of a giant molten orb depicted in sci-fi movies, real meteorites are typically no bigger than a golf ball and look like a burnt rock.
"They are not radioactive or toxic and would feel warm to the touch, at best, if picked up immediately after crashing," said Moore.
Meteorites are worth their weight in gold and can command six-figure sums. Only two have ever been found on Irish soil over the past century because they rarely land on terra firma and Ireland being so small that they usually wind up in the sea.
The last one, found by an elderly woman in County Carlow in 1999, was sold to a private collector in Scotland for several thousand pounds. Another was found in Northern Ireland in 1969.
The museum will happily pay a reward if the meteorite is found. But its value, and the reward, would depend on the size and the rarity of the specimen found. Preliminary analysis suggests that it may have landed in County Sligo or elsewhere in the West, Mr. Moore said.
