Overview
- A very bright fireball streaked across eastern Australia at about 6:30pm on Thursday and was seen from Sydney, Canberra and many regional New South Wales communities.
- Multiple dashcams and phone videos captured the object as it flashed and appeared to fragment, producing sightings of blue, green and orange colours.
- Astronomers including Dr Brad Tucker and researchers at Curtin University’s Desert Fireball Network have identified the event as a meteor and offered preliminary size estimates of roughly 10 centimetres to 0.5 metres, with common estimates near 30–50 centimetres.
- Teams are now running trajectory and spectral analyses to pin the fall zone and composition, and no confirmed landing site or recovered meteorite material has been reported to date.
- Fireballs like this are uncommon over populated areas but not rare, and recovered fragments can yield scientific data about the solar system so experts urge anyone who finds a suspected meteorite to avoid handling it and to contact researchers for proper collection.