Let's Go Mooning

 One day in April (sounds like a song) a rare fireball went zooming across the sky in northern Maine. This was in broad daylight, well before happy hour, so we know it really happened!

And now, if you are a lucky Mainer and can come up with a piece of that meteorite, you can count on some cash coming your way!

According to NASA, and they are the ones who would know, this was the first radar-observed meteorite fall ever seen in Maine.  Most meteorites know how avoid radar traps, but apparently, this one just got its license a little while ago. 

It was up near New Brunswick, Canada that people saw that big ol' fireball, and then the residents of Calais, Maine, reported "loud sonic booms."

We don't usually get fireballs during the daylight, because of the sun and all that light, but the Maine Mineral and Gem Museum says this was for real!

"This fireball being seen during the day is incredibly rare; imagine how bright it would have been at night," the Museum said in a Facebook post.

NASA backs them up, saying that their radar detected that meteorites had fallen, and they figured that that strong winds of up to 100 miles per hour carried smaller ones across the border into Canada in a mile-wide "strewn field" from just north of Waite, Maine, to Canoose, New Brunswick. 

And here is where the money comes in. Besides the thrill of being able to say you have been to a town called Canoose, the mineral museum is encouraging people to go explore it.

"The existence of positive Doppler radar returns — meteorites detected descending through the atmosphere just several miles above ground — assures us there are meteorites waiting to be found," Darryl Pitt, chair of the museum's meteorite division, said.

The payoff is $25,000 for the first kilogram of meteorite found, and they would be willing to purchase other fragments, too.

"Depending upon the type of meteorite this is, specimens could easily be worth their weight in gold," said Pitt.

So head for Canoose, and happy hunting!