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Wisconsin Fireball: Pieces Of Meteorite Found By Terry Boudreaux

by Yuliya Talmazan | April 16, 2010 at 07:46 pm

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Rocks From The Fireball Meteorite Sighted In Midwest Skies On Wednesday Found

Collector Terry Boudreaux of Chicago claims he has found the first pieces of fireball meteorite that zipped across the skies in Midwestern United States on Wednesday night.

Meteor Sighted in Wisconsin: Meteor Shower Over Iowa (Video)

On April 14, a fireball was sighted in the skies over Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri and Illinois. The fireball that was part of a meteorite shower lighted up the skies, causing an outpouring of emergency calls from the onlookers. The meteorite passing also launched a hunt to find the remaining pieces of the rock on the ground in Wisconsin. Meteorite pieces can be used in planetary research, but also go for a lot of money on the collector market.

Boudreaux says he calculated the path of the meteor and took off to Livingston with his two sons to look for the precious rocks. He was not the first one to find them, however. A local farmer showed the remains of the meteor to Boudreaux. The collector bought off the rock from the farmer and is planning to come back to collect more scattered rocks that could be worth thousands of dollars.

"There are probably hundreds to thousands of pieces scattered out there," said Boudreaux, adding that the big prize would be the intact center of the meteorite. "Finding a meteorite (fragment) is rare enough. Finding the main mass is much, much rarer."

Here is the video of the fireball lighting up the skies over Wisconsin on April 14.