Fireballs Aotearoa citizen scientist Steve Wyn-Harris holding the rock after it has been packaged up to protect it from hands and the environment. Photo / Steve Wyn-Harris
They were now celebrating at the pub after coming across the meteorite before the search proper had even got under way.
Fireballs Aotearoa citizen scientist Steve Wyn-Harris excitedly recounted the tale.
“We had hoped to get more [volunteers] to search because it was such a big area to search - 200 or 300 hectares - and we found it. We found it on our way to the search area,” Wyn-Harris said.
Jack Weterings, one of the volunteers, had spotted the meteorite.
The meteorite touched down in the MacKenzie Country, somewhere south of Lake Takapō/Tekapo.
“It is a bit like a needle in a haystack and where we were on a big glacial plain covered in stones and very little vegetation, but this particular stone stood out,” Wyn-Harris said.
“It looked a bit like a piece of coal - a dark, black stone amongst a whole lot of grey, greywacke. It had embedded itself into the ground. It was in a small crater. We think this stone is about a kilo in weight.”
Geologist Marshall Palmer inspected it and was very excited by the find.
Fireballs Aotearoa director James Scott had also inspected it remotely from Germany and was equally excited.
Palmer’s initial analysis of the rock showed it was very high in nickel, “which is almost confirmation it’s a meteorite”, Wyn-Harris said.
The rock would now be sent to the University of Otago to confirm its extra-terrestrial origins, but those involved were 99 per cent sure it was the meteorite.
“We found the bastard and this is not just my Everest but Fireballs Aotearoa, which has co-ordinated the search and whose cameras allowed the maths and physics to be done to know where to search, but also a small group of volunteers from the Tekapo community,” Wyn-Harris said.
The rock, believed to be a meteorite, sitting on a glacial plain south of Lake Tekapo. Photo / Steve Wyn-Harris
In exchange for giving up ownership of the meteorite, Weterings had been gifted a fireballs camera so he could join the citizen sleuths with an eye on the sky.
Meteorites that landed on private land became the property of the landowner, but those found on public land were subject to the law of finders-keepers.
