CARTERSVILLE, Ga. — In June, a piece of rock flew at extremely high speeds and struck a house in McDonough, fireball flashing in the skies over Georgia included.
Now, the McDonough Meteorite, as it’s been named by the University of Georgia, is on display at the Tellus Museum in Cartersville.
Channel 2’s Linda Stouffer was at the museum where the display lets visitors see a piece of space rock for themselves, in person.
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“In the movies I see them and they go like ‘weeeeee’ and it’s pretty cool,” a visitor to the museum told Stouffer.
A dark side of the meteorite shows burn marks from its fiery trip into Earth’s atmosphere, while a gray side shows fresh cracks in a stone that’s likely more than 4.5 billion years old.
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Over the summer, Stouffer talked to Scott Harris, a planetary geologist who does research with UGA.
Harris examined fragments of the meteorite with an electron microscope to see what the rock was made of.
“You see the bright objects here are the metals, so it’s minerals and metals,” Harris said. “Mostly minerals and rocks that you might find here on Earth.”
The meteor was unusually bright and dramatic, visible even in daylight, so people and their cameras could catch it as it fell to Earth.
Rebecca Melsheimer, a coordinator at the Tellus Museum, said some people were calling in to ask what happened.
She said the museum is working to turn the space-related event into an opportunity to teach the public about the galaxy.
“This is our Georgia meteorite case,” Melsheimer said, showing Channel 2 Action News a display full of fragments. “These are all meteorites that have been found in Georgia, extends back to 1829.”
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