Well-known Arizona meteorite collector Robert Haag is offering $10,000 for the first one-kilogram chunk of the fallen meteor. "The first piece that is found, I am immediately catching the first plane to Canada with a pocket full of money," he said Monday.Haag, who suspects meteorites could be found somewhere in the Macklin, Sask., area near the Alberta border, said he won't be alone.

"It's a happening. It's like Woodstock. It's Rockstock," he said. "Take your trucks and campers, hitch up your horses, do what you need to do and let's find it."

From Edmonton to Edgeley, Sask., and points in-between, people reported a brilliant ball of light streaking across western Canadian skies Thursday. Hundreds flooded phone lines at police stations and media outlets with accounts of a multicoloured meteor. University of Calgary planetary scientist Alan Hildebrand was also heading to Macklin this weekend to hunt for what he believes was a part of an asteroid, a small planetary body."You are talking about something, say, the size of a chair or a desk that entered the atmosphere."

Hildebrand, who is with a group of university scientists behind Prairie Meteorite Search, expects to find hundreds of meteorite pieces ranging in size from as big as an adult's head to as small as the tip of a finger.

Hildebrand said the pieces will likely be strewn over an area of five kilometres long and three kilometres wide. "We have tens of thousands of meteorites, but we don't know where they come from," he said."The fun thing in this case would be that we have enough video records that if we find meteorites we'll know what orbit the rock fell from. That's only been done nine times before."

People in the Macklin area should be on the lookout for pieces of the meteorite, said Haag.

"It will look a lot like concrete that has been dipped in black paint, except that it would be really smooth," he said.