What drives a meteorite hunter?

Rob Elliot makes a living from falling stars as the UK's only full-time meteorite hunter. Our reporter speaks to him

• Rob Elliot's obsession with meteorites even extends to his vehicle licence plates

GAZING up at the night sky, Rob Elliott is on constant alert for fireballs or streaks of light suddenly breaking up the darkness above him. As the UK's only full-time meteorite hunter, Elliott knows these falls from outer space can contain the most magnificent and exciting rock fragments created billions of years before the Earth was formed.

With specimens capable of fetching thousands of pounds depending on their rarity value – those from Mars and the Moon being the most prized – every meteorite shower is literally "treasure from Heaven".

A meteorite is a piece of a meteoroid or asteroid which has survived its journey through the Earth's atmosphere, falling to the ground without being destroyed. They are also known as fireballs or shooting stars.

Each year more than 30 meteorites fall on British soil, yet only 20 have ever been found.

Elliott, a "hunter" renowned worldwide discovered one of only four ever found in Scotland – the Glenrothes meteorite, which he found in July 1998.

He also discovered the Hambleton meteorite in North Yorkshire in 2005, an extremely rare pallasite meteorite containing semi-precious gemstones. Weighing in at 43llbs, it was the second biggest space rock to hit the UK.

On Wednesday, a large part of Elliott's collection – the UK's largest private collection of meteorites – will go under the hammer at Lyon & Turnbull auction house in Edinburgh to fund what he describes as "an expensive endeavour with highly unpredictable results". Two years ago a similar sale raised 113,000.

Despite being at the top of his profession, Elliott, 50, from Milton of Balgonie, in Fife, has never lost his passion for space rocks. "I've been all over the world and I've got a specially-prepared truck on standby outside my door complete with sleeping bags, clothes, cooking utensils, oven and fridge. I'm ready to drive off at a moment's notice if reports indicate that a meteorite has fallen," he says. He gave up his job as a Trident defence engineer 15 years ago to hunt meteorites full-time.

"If I hear on the news or read anywhere that someone is claiming to have found a meteorite I'll wait a bit until another two or three people in the area say they too saw something in the sky. Witnesses are invaluable, especially if they are saying things like, 'Oh, I saw this massive fireball which went in such-and-such a place', and then someone else says the same thing. The chances are there will be more meteorites in the area."

Elliott, whose celebrity customers have included Michael Jackson, Queen guitarist and astrophysicist Brian May and Uri Geller, says another source of information can be footage from CCTV cameras operating during the night.

"No-one can look at the night sky all the time. If you are looking at CCTV footage, a meteorite coming down would be so bright it would light up the screen.

"If cameras were pointing at a car park in the middle of the night for example, you'd see a flash on the ground. Something like a lamp post will cast a shadow and you can tell where the fireball was and the direction of travel. By using this information you can use triangulation to work out where best to go."

However, once he has arrived at a location, Elliott's equipment is somewhat basic – a cut-off golf club with a very strong magnet attached to the end as a makeshift metal detector.

Minerals within the meteorites often contain iron metals which is why they are magnetic. But metal detectors can be waylaid by the amount of metallic debris under the soil, including tin cans and ring pulls.

"I know what I'm looking for, and mostly I'll just walk around using my eyes.

"Meteorites have a tell-tale signature. If they are freshly fallen it is as if they have black paint on them – a 'fusion crust'. Inside there will be pale-coloured stone. All the interesting stuff is in the inside – that's where you'll see tiny little flakes of metal glittering."

Describing how he found the Glenrothes meteorite in July 1998, Elliott says: "I was out fishing in a reservoir with my father-in-law but it was so windy the boat kept getting blown about and we came into the shore looking for a big rock to tie the lines to.

"I saw some interesting-looking 'pebbles' on the ground and put them in the pocket of my fishing jacket. Sometime later I rediscovered them and immediately suspected they were meteorites but wasn't completely sure until It was analysed by a meterotist. It had literally been a case of finding a falling star and putting it in your pocket."

The Hambleton meteorite was found while Elliott and his wife, Irene, were out walking in North Yorkshire in 2005.

Not only is the Hambleton extremely rare – it is a pallasite, which account for less than 1 per cent of meteorites – it contains olivine crystals, better known as peridot.

The striking green peridot gemstone was referred to as the "Evening emerald" in Roman times because it did not lose its lustre at night but was still visible by lamplight. When sliced and polished its colours resemble a stained-glass window.

Elliott first became interested in collecting meteorites after reading the small ads in an astronomy magazine in the mid-90s. The magical wording was "own a piece of another world". He sent off a cheque which led to his first purchase of a small iron meteorite found in the Namibian desert.

A sizable bank loan eventually allowed him to start up his own business enabling him to buy rare and expensive meteorites which he cut and sold to collectors.

Over the years Elliott has travelled the world building up his meteorite collection and is ranked as one of the world's top meteorite dealers.

Because many museums and universities prefer to barter and swap meteorites rather than buy them, he has developed a wide range of contacts with museum curators and scientists. A donation to the Natural History Museum in London in 2002 resulted him being invited to dine with one of his boyhood heroes, astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

After Elliott or a member of the public discovers what they hope is a meteorite the next stage is for the rock sample to analysed and validated by a meteoriticist.

Professor Martin Lee, a meteorite expert from the school of geographical and earth sciences at the University of Glasgow, who is often sent samples by members of the public, said: "They are keen to know if what they've found could be a meteorite and if it one, what it could be worth.

"But for me there is the issue of the scientific interest of what has been found. Without exaggeration, scientists can spend years working on just one sample of a meteorite which may be just a few centimetres across because they are so complicated.

"The first step is to validate whether or not it is a meteorite, and if so, work out what type it is.

"The rock is put in an electromicroscope, then we fire electronics at it which generate X-rays to help with the analysis.

"It the rock is validated by meteorite scientists it is given a classification. When that's been done there's a committee which oversees its naming and it is ratified by an international committee.

"Meteorites are of great scientific interest because they have been unaltered since the solar system was formed. They have spent four-and-a-half billion years in a vacuum, whereas rocks on Earth have gone through a process of heating, melting and crystalisation.

"If we can understand how a meteorite was formed we can extrapolate that to other solar systems and maybe understand the origins of life."

But Lee said those inspired to hunt for meteorites in Scotland could face an uphill struggle.

"Scotland is a very, very, bad place for finding meteorites. They contain a lot of iron and will dissolve quickly in wet, damp conditions. They will only last a few tens of years on the surface of Scotland. In fact, probably the best place to find them is somewhere like the Sahara desert where rocks last a lot longer."

Under UK law a small sample of a meteorite found by a member of the public – 20 per cent of the total mass, or 20gms, whichever is smaller – must be donated to an institution. The finder and or the landowner on whose property it was found are the legal owners of the remainder.

Elliott added: "I've worked with meteorites for so long. I've got hundreds sitting in a room in my house protected with security equipment and cameras. I can go and pick up a piece of another world any time I want. If you've got romance in your blood, it does the job."

• Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh auction a collection of Rob Elliott's meteorites on Wednesday from 2pm. Viewing today, 10am-7pm and from 9am on Wednesday. For more information, visit: www.lyonandturnbull.com