4.6bn-year-old 'green fireball' meteor seen in New Zealand on Sunday

A green fireball dazzled New Zealanders on the night of August 30. The Tauranga Astronomical Society shared a video of the light in the night sky captured just before 7:45 pm. "We captured this on one of our meteor cameras at the observatory (Fergusson Park, Matua, Tauranga) and TAS member David Greig captured it on one of his home meteor cameras," the body said in an online post. Tauranga added that the fireball was spotted travelling from west to east over the upper North Island.

This was no ordinary meteor, according to Tauranga Astronomical Society president and Fireballs Aotearoa member David Greig, who spoke with 1News. He said that this space rock came from the Asteroid Belt, the zone located between Mars and Jupiter where billions of asteroids and meteors reside. Greig revealed that the meteor formed when the solar system was a chaotic place around 4.6 billion years ago. It was moving at a speed of 17 kilometres per second, or 61,200 km per hour.

Videos of New Zealand meteor

The fireball was visible for nearly 10 seconds and several people reported seeing it. Fireballs Aotearoa director Steve Wyn-Harris told the outlet that it burnt up 30 kilometres "over the ocean north of Tauranga and south east of Whitianga" and did not drop any smaller rocks into the water. Towards the end, its speed had fallen to 5 to 6 km per second.

Why was the meteor green?

Experts explained that the green colour was because of magnesium, as the metals in a space rock decide the hue of the meteors. "When a meteoroid high in magnesium burns up, it emits a bright teal or cyan-green light," Greig said. Besides magnesium, nickel and iron also likely vapourised as it entered Earth's atmosphere.

People shared videos of the meteor on social media. One person who saw it from Tauranga described it as "bright green with a white tail."