Clever collectors keen to get their hands on a piece of a meteorite are trying to pinpoint the location where a space rock fell to Earth in Queensland on Saturday night.
The meteor, estimated to be a metre across, lit up skies between Mackay and Cairns and west to the Gulf of Carpentaria.
Citizen scientists across Australia are now collating data to determine its landing site, with all leads pointing to the tiny Gulf town of Croydon.
Professor Phil Bland from Curtin University's School of Earth and Planetary Sciences said the sonic boom felt by residents indicated the meteorite could have landed near the town.
"The object would have come down quite close," he said.
"In most cases the entire thing burns up and nothing lands.
"[But] there is a chance that something landed."
Croydon Shire Mayor Trevor Pickering said he expected the event to draw prospectors to the town, which has a population of just 266.
"I've heard that people may be coming looking for it," he said.
"There's got to be bits of it laying around somewhere.
"Finding the site would be difficult but I would actually like to put a helicopter up and have a bit of a fly around."
Meteor sets citizen science community ablaze
David Finlay runs an online citizen science group from Kiama, south of Sydney.
By day he works in road construction, and by night he looks to the sky and discusses phenomena like meteors with the 40,000 members of his Facebook group, Australian Meteor Reports.
Saturday's meteor has driven huge astronomical interest among the online community.
"From this one event on Saturday, we have had over a thousand new members join," Mr Finlay said.
The group is collating videos of the event and expects to triangulate the location of the meteorite by the end of the week.
"It is somewhere around Croydon in Queensland. It could be to the south of the town," Mr Finlay said.
"This is a passion project, this is what you could call pure citizen science."
Meteor was made of common metal
Professor Bland said meteors are common and recorded by desert fireball network cameras every month in Australia.
What made this event unusual was that it was seen in populated areas.
Griffith University's dean of research, Professor Dr Paulo De Souza, believes it was a common metallic meteorite because of its blue and green colouring.
"Some meteorites are very common, very easy to find. Those are mainly made of that melted metal, usually iron and nickel," he said.
"You have to win a lottery to find a really special piece of rock that came from a unique place.
"But just being part of it is being a part of science citizenship."
Professor De Souza encouraged anyone who may have found a meteorite to document the discovery to assist further research.
"Take photos of the site, take a GPS location of where you found it, then contact a local university," he said.
