Watch: Huge fireball racing towards the ground seen across South Island sky

Friday, 15 March 2024

A large fireball was captured entering the atmosphere above South Canterbury and North Otago around 9pm on Wednesday.

A large fireball was seen crossing the sky above Otago and Canterbury around 9pm on Wednesday.
Several of Fireball Aotearoa’s community-hosted meteor cameras managed to capture the meteor which was racing towards the ground.
Otago University geologist Professor James Scott said the calculations indicated that the meteor fell to the ground in the MacKenzie Basin to the south of Lake Tekapo.

A burning meteor has lit up the sky above Otago and Canterbury in the South Island with video footage showing the fireball racing towards the ground.

Queenstown’s Arthurs Point resident Dennis Behan was speechless when he spotted the fireball from his hot tub shortly after 9pm on Wednesday.

“I have never seen a meteor in person. So, when it popped up, I was a bit speechless. But I managed to get enough out to get my wife to turn her head so that we both saw it,” he told Stuff.

For over a year, Behan has been involved with Fireball Aotearoa, and managed to capture some spectacular images of the meteor from the community-hosted meteor camera installed at his house.

Mackenzie Country fireball from the Fireballs Aotearoa meteor camera installed at Dennis Behan’s house in Arthurs Point, Queenstown.

“At that moment, I happened to be looking in the right direction and had our camera pointed in the same direction,” he said.

“It was very, very fortunate.”

Meteors or “shooting stars” are meteoroids that enter the earth’s atmosphere at a very high speed. These rocks heat up during the process and produce a streak of light.

Otago University geologist Professor James Scott explained: “A fireball is formed by the air in front of the rock becoming compressed and heating to the point at which it melts and vaporises the margins of the rock.”

Dennis Behan said he was a bit speechless when he saw the fireball from his hot tub.

He said the fireball on Wednesday, which was captured by several Fireball Aotearoa community-hosted meteor cameras, was visible across the sky only for 5.5 seconds, during which the meteor descended from 90km down to 25km elevation.

It’s an unusual event, Scott said.

“The orbit of the meteorite indicates that it came from the inner Solar System close to the Sun. Most meteorites come from ancient debris located in the Asteroid Belt and, to a lesser degree, Mars and the Moon.

“These rocks are typically millions, if not billions, of years old and represent material from which the planets, moons and asteroids have been built. Therefore, any space rock is valuable to science as it helps to define our place in space.”

Behan told Stuff that for him, it looked like the meteor landed “just over the hill”. But, Scott said their calculations indicated that the meteor must have fallen to the ground in the MacKenzie Basin to the south of Lake Tekapo.

Scott advises people to let Fireball Aotearoa know about the precise location, if anyone finds a rock, which could be a “single fragment” or “fragmented smaller bits”.