Hundreds of ns spotted a ‘giant fireball’ shooting across the sky on Thursday morning, as a meteor travelled across the country.
The meteor’s bright flash sparked numerous calls to 2GB’s Ben Fordham, as listeners reported the sighting and sought answers about what it could be.
Brad Tucker, a space expert from the n National University, confirmed that the sighting was likely a meteor.
‘It sounds like a meteor based on what everyone is saying, due to the fast nature of it – meteors move across the sky in seconds, if that,’ he told Fordham.
‘A couple of people noticed the green tinge, and that’s the biggest clue because these meteors, which are basically broken-off asteroids, burn a greenish-blue color due to the iron-nickel in them.’
He said asteroids travel at speeds between 50,000 and 100,000km/h, and this one would likely have been visible across .
‘It clearly covered a lot of distance in a short amount of time, so definitely a broken chunk of an asteroid that randomly hit the earth’s atmosphere,’ he explained.
Aussies from across the country called Fordham after spotting the unusual spectacle zoom through the sky.
‘I actually just saw something in the sky and I thought “I hope I’m not losing it”. It looked like a meteorite or a fireball. It was shooting just straight down,’ Sydneysider Andrew said.
John, who was in Penrith, initially thought it was a shooting star but was baffled by its green tinge.
Others spotted the meteor in Richmond – about 63km northwest of Sydney, in the Hunter Valley – about 170km north of Sydney, and over Sydney’s international airport.
Graham, from Toowoomba in Queensland, even saw the meteor fly across the state’s southern sky.’
What is a meteor?
A meteor is a streak of light in the sky that is caused by a meteoroid travelling at high speed through the Earth’s atmosphere.
Meteoroids are space rocks that range in size from dust grains to small asteroids, with the term only applying for rocks that are still in space.
However, when a meteoroid enters the Earth’s atmosphere, it is referred to as a meteor or as a shooting star.
Sometimes when a meteor crashes through the atmosphere it can burn brighter than Venus and is then referred to as a ‘fireball’.
Scientists estimate about 44,000kg of meteoritic material falls on Earth every day, according to NASA.