Spectacular meteor over Northland might’ve dropped a meteorite

Witnesses from Kaitaia to the Waikato reported seeing a spectacular once-in-a-lifetime meteor above Northland at 4.26 am on Saturday November 19^th. A sharemilker at Kaiwaka said that the “The paddocks in front of me lit up in a pulsing light green hue. I turned around thinking it was a vehicle on the road behind me. I saw [a meteor] falling from sky in a northerly direction, where it changed from green to orange yellow. My relief milker who was 30 mins north driving southwards also saw it and asked about it on her arrival”.

After seeing the fireball, multiple people reported hearing a sonic boom, which is caused when the meteorite is travelling faster than the speed of sound and compresses the sound waves. One person reported that it “sounded like a bomb went off in their neighbour’s property”. Footage captured by three security cameras show it to have streaked across the sky for up to 6 seconds before the fireball extinguished.

Click here for a full report of this event.

Article added: Monday 21 November 2022