An exhibition that reveals the fascinating story of how a space researchers found a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite opens this week.

St Neots Museum and the East Anglian Astrophysical Research Organisation (EAARO) are hosting ‘How to find a meteorite’ exhibition.

The exhibition, at the museum, is called ‘How to find a meteorite’ tells the amazing story of how space researchers from EAARO found a 4.6-billion-year-old meteorite in 2021.

Chairman of EAARO, Jason Williams said: “This exhibition is a fantastic opportunity us to celebrate and tell the miraculous story of how a Cambridgeshire based team found a very rare space rock.

"I hope it will help to empower others to make similar exciting discoveries.

"Several thousand meteors burn up in the atmosphere every day often over the oceans and uninhabited regions. Those that occur at night are often missed because there are so few people around to observe them.

"When I received a phone call from a very excited colleague who had successfully captured video data of a meteor fireball seen in the skies above the UK, I felt compelled to put together a search team to hunt for possible fragments."

The exhibition, which tells the story of how the meteorite was found, runs from Tuesday, June 18 to Saturday, July 13 at St Neots Museum when normal museum charges and opening times apply.

The Meteorite weekend is on Saturday, June 22 and Sunday, June 23 and on only these two days the meteorite and the EAARO team who found it will be in the museum to share their story plus there’ll be some family activities happening too.

Entrance to the Meteorite Weekend is by ticket only available from stneotsmuseum.org.uk/whats-on/

Learning Officer Lesley Sainsbury said: ‘We’ve got some very old things in our collection but the meteorite, at 4.6 billion years old, beats them all.

"It’s great to be able to share this wonderful story and I’m really looking forward to the family weekend which will be great fun."