Stifler said the collections for the museum have been in progress for the past 15 years. He and his wife have a part-time home in Bethel.

Walking through the exhibit halls, “wows” and “oohs” were heard from children and adults alike.

Meteorites are very rare. They are fragments of materials from asteroids, comets, the moon and Mars that hit Earth. The largest ones, like Odessa, cause craters.

A meteorite differs from a meteor, which also is a body of rock or metal in space. However, if the space rock vaporizes when it enters the Earth’s atmosphere, it is a meteor, or shooting star, that often can be seen on a clear night.

The museum’s certificate of authenticity said the Odessa meteorite, which is made mostly of iron, originated from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

It entered the Earth’s atmosphere about 70,000 years ago, when saber-toothed tigers and mastodons still lived, as a large fireball that broke up and created several craters in what later became an oil field.

The museum has more than 3,000 minerals and interactive exhibits, including ones with microscopes to more closely see rocks and other samples. Two exhibits let visitors touch real moon and Mars rocks.

Among the exhibits are the five largest pieces of the moon found on Earth and the largest known piece of the Vesta asteroid, which is the brightest asteroid in the sky.

The museum also has meteorites with extraterrestrial gemstones and the oldest igneous rock in the solar system. That rock, formed from lava or magma that cooled, is 4.56 billion years old.

In the basement of the museum is a research laboratory with one of only two electron microscopes in Maine to study rock samples and determine if they are meteorites, said Stifler, who with his wife heads the Stifler Family Foundation that funded the museum.

“This educational opportunity typically is not available except in big urban centers,” Stifler said. “I’d like to think a future geologist or astrophysicist will get their curiosity stimulated when coming here and start a career.”