A meteor seen across large parts of New Zealand at about 10pm last night caused a sonic boom and a flash of blue light, reports Radio New Zealand.
Josh Sherborne posted a dashcam video he said was taken on the way into Tauranga.
An astronomer at Auckland's Stardome Observatory, Grant Christie, said the meteor seemed to have appeared near Gisborne, then headed north near Whakatane and up to the east of Auckland.
“I think this has got the hallmarks of a pretty decent-sized rock, probably something in the order of a metre to two metres across,” he said.
The meteor would have exploded at about 20 kilometres above the earth.
“A lot of people say it landed in the valley next to them, or it looked close - but that's an illusion really.
The thing's moving along, entering the atmosphere probably about 20 to 30 kilometres per second ... much faster than speeds people have any familiarity with.
“What looks like just above the hills near them is way, way beyond that, probably hundreds of kilometres away.”
Meteors were rare over New Zealand, Christie added. “The last one that was well documented was probably the one in 1999 over southern Taranaki.”
