Two pieces from a meteor that blazed across the Texas sky this month are going from the asteroid belt to the auction block.

Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries announced Thursday that it is putting two meteorites up for sale May 17. One is an 8-ounce specimen that could fetch up to $5,000.

The meteorites were discovered in the West area, about 70 miles south of Dallas, by an Arizona meteorite hunter whose trip was partially financed by an anonymous collector in New York, said David Herskowitz, natural history consultant for the auction house.

"Both specimens are extensively covered with fresh fusion crust from burning through the atmosphere," Herskowitz said.

People across Texas reported seeing a fireball Feb. 15. The Federal Aviation Administration at first suggested that it could have been debris from colliding satellites, but later said it was probably a natural phenomenon.

A pair of University of North Texas astronomers also discovered two meteorites near West, saying they were about the "size of large pecans."

The pieces are chondrite, which is "a pretty common type of space rock," said Ron DiIulio, the director of the astronomy laboratory program at UNT. He and another UNT astronomer have already run one of the rocks through a series of tests.

"We are tracking down the possibility that they are part of a large asteroid collision that was over 100 kilometers in size," DiIulio said. "They are from the asteroid belt. It appears two huge ones crashed, because this one shows evidence of a catastrophic collision that knocked it into the path of our atmosphere."

The UNT professors are not selling their rocks, but said they will instead study them and put them on display at the university.