Suspected meteor lights up Sydney sky, delivering ‘quite the show’ for shocked onlookers

A suspected meteor has been captured shining above the Sydney skyline on Thursday night, shocking onlookers who watched the unexpected cosmic show unfold from their vehicles and verandahs.

The meteor was seen almost exploding like a fireball at about 6.30pm. Dashcam footage from several cars across the city shows the meteor hurtling through the air, before burning up and combusting in a sudden orange explosion.

Witnesses posting to social media claimed the meteorite was seen from the South Coast, Dubbo and Bathurst, among other areas.

Australian National University Associate Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics Brad Tucker saw the meteorite from Canberra, telling this masthead he estimated it to be 30 to 50 centimetres in size, which he said, “may not seem big, but they are super dense so [it] put on quite the show”.

“It was a good-sized one,” Tucker said. “We are trying to extend a network … out to the east coast to … track them.”

The suspected meteorite was yet to be officially confirmed on Thursday night. The Desert Fireball Network, the Curtin University-run research group tasked with studying meteorites, fireballs and their pre-Earth orbits, are working to determine the nature of the suspected meteorite.

Meteors occur when rocks from space enter the Earth’s atmosphere at high speed and burn up, often called shooting stars. When a meteoroid, a rock still in space, survives its journey through Earth’s atmosphere and hits the ground, it is called a meteorite.

Tucker estimated that an object such as the one observed on Thursday flies over Australia “every few weeks”, though most shooting stars are tiny specks of dust equivalent to the size of a grain of sand.

About 200 tonnes of space rocks hit Earth every day, according to Tucker. He suggested that the green colour of the meteorite seen in dashcam footage indicates the rock could be made of iron and nickel.

Tony Morris told this masthead he saw the meteor in Pyrmont.

“I thought it was a blue flare coming from Darling Harbour in a pre-Vivid test,” he said.

Mel’s son pointed out the meteor when the pair were out for a run in Singleton in the Hunter Valley on Thursday night.

“It was like a streak of lightning straight through the sky,” she told 2GB on Friday.

NSW Police received no property damage reports or calls for assistance on Thursday night related to the suspected meteorite. Work to determine the particulars of the meteorite, including its size, speed and landing site, is expected to continue on Friday.

The sighting comes amid the Eta Aquariid meteor shower, which is visible between mid-April and late-May.

The shower is associated with debris from Halley’s Comet and is more commonly sighted in the southern hemisphere.

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