If your rock has any holes, is porous or has crystals, it’s not a meteorite. If your budget allows, you could also use a metal detector. If the rock sticks to the magnet, you might have found a meteorite! Some meteorites have a relatively high percentage of metals, especially iron. Is it a meteorite?Īfter you find a rock you suspect is a meteorite, one of the easiest ways to check your candidate is by carrying a magnet. Some have thumbprint-like depressions covering the surface called regmaglypts. Meteorites are generally dark, black, or rusty and reddish brown. When out for your next hike, look for any rock that is dissimilar to its surroundings. This FAQ tells about meteorite collection on public lands, and here’s the Bureau of Land Management policy. Bureau of Land Management, whatever meteorite you find is yours to keep, with some restrictions. Just remember you’ll need permission to hike on any lands and to take out anything you find. Fragment of the Chelyabinsk meteorite that exploded over Russia in February 2013. Most of us will need to work a bit harder to find our meteorites. In 2013 after a quiet February morning was disrupted by a superbolide that lit the sky and shattered windows, residents west of Chelyabinsk in Russia found meteorites simply by looking for the holes in snowdrifts that the rocks had burrowed into. This space rock is a fragment about 2 inches (5 cm) wide, brushed to a high shine after it was collected at the Campo del Cielo site. Meteorite strike zones or “strewn fields” can reap rewards for years, such as the Gold Basin in Arizona, which has yielded thousands of specimens since its first discovery in 1995. Keeping an eye on the websites of the American Meteor Society or the International Meteor Organization might might also be a good starting point. Debris from such displays scatters across the ground, and sometimes hits structures or vehicles. Keep an eye open for local reports of brilliant fireballs lighting your region’s sky. You don’t always have to travel to the other side of the world to find a meteorite. In fact, Antarctica is such a good spot for meteorite hunters that crews of scientists visit every year, searching for these otherworldly rocks, driving around the surface until they spot a lone dark rock on an otherwise unbroken expanse of white. For this reason, meteorites tend to be darker than regular rocks on Earth, and they’re best spotted on light-colored terrain with little vegetation, such as the American Southwest or Antarctica. Its fiery entrance leaves a fusion crust on the surface of the meteorite. That burning space rock is the meteor or “shooting star” you see in the sky. Friction, pressure, and chemical interactions with atmospheric gases cause it to begin to burn as it plummets downward.

Order yours before they’re gone! How a meteorite formsĪ meteorite can only get to Earth’s surface by passing through our planet’s thick atmosphere. Once you find a meteorite candidate, analyzing a few characteristics will help you determine if your rock is truly from space.ĮarthSky’s lunar calendar shows the moon phase for every day in 2022. If you want to find a meteorite of your own, you can increase your odds by heading to certain types of terrain or areas where there’s been a known meteorite fall. Some meteorites have been here on Earth for millennia, but there are continually new arrivals, some bright and loud enough to make the news. If you’re looking for one of these space rocks, where do you look? A meteorite can turn up just about anywhere on Earth. Their name changes on the first bounce off Earth’s surface from meteor to meteorite. But sometimes chunks of more rocky or metallic space debris enter Earth’s atmosphere and survive the fiery passage to the ground. Most meteors are tiny particles left behind by icy comets they never reach Earth’s surface. Meteors are the streaks of light you see in the night sky. Image via Arizona State University/ Michael Farmer. Note the dark fusion crust, a feature that can help you tell a meteorite from an ordinary earthly rock. This meteorite that landed in the Aguas Zarcas district of Costa Rica hit a doghouse on April 23, 2019.

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