Aussies stunned by ‘fireball' meteor
Residents in Western Australia have been stunned by a 'fireball' meteor that lit up the skies.
The bright fireball passed through the skies about 6am on Sunday over the Central Wheatbelt, producing a brilliant yellow flash and a trail of bright green.
Witnesses were able to catch a glimpse of the early-morning meteor from Perth to the Goldfields, however, experts are yet to determine where it eventually landed. Residents in Western Australia have been stunned as a meteor lit up the skies on Sunday morning. Supplied Credit: Supplied
The Perth Observatory said the astronomical sight was 'most likely an iron meteor' which had been 'orbiting within the inner Solar System'.
'To shine that brightly, the fireball — technically known as a bolide — would have been about the size of a cricket ball to a basketball,' the observatory said online. The 'fireball' meteor left a green trail in its wake Supplied Credit: Supplied
According to Perth Observatory's Matthew Woods, the meteor would have been travelling between 16 to 60km per second, leaving behind a trail of green as the built-up friction melted.
He told 9News it was 'one hell of a meteor'.
'That was very nice … little surprise for Mother's Day,' he said. Some thought the light was the moon. Supplied Credit: Supplied The meteor was spotted across much of the state. Supplied Credit: Supplied
Online, witnesses were dumbfounded by the 'spectacular' sight, with some believing it was an aeroplane.
'Never seen anything like it,' one person wrote.
'Thought someone was driving at us with high beams on at first,' said another, who watched it pass overhead from Newdegate.
A resident from Mt Magnet said they initially thought the 'huge and burning bright orange-red' light was 'the moon until it moved'. The meteor created a bright orange and red light. Supplied Credit: Supplied
Some thought the meteor was the Kosmos 482, a Soviet-era spacecraft that plunged back to earth more than 50 years after its failed launch to Venus.
However, Curtin University astrophysicist Steven Tingay told the ABC it was unlikely the fallen spacecraft, which likely landed over the Indian Ocean on Saturday, though European and US agencies are yet to confirm its exact location.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sydney Morning Herald
2 days ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
There were no known sightings of this critically endangered animal outside Victoria. Now it's in NSW
A critically endangered Leadbeater's possum – previously thought to be extinct in NSW – has been discovered in Kosciuszko National Park, to the delight of ecologists. The discovery of the sole possum near the Yarrangobilly Caves indicates the presence of a colony of the tiny creatures, which weigh just 125 grams. The historic find was made last Monday during a review by threatened-species officers from the NSW environment department of almost 1 million images from wildlife cameras as they surveyed for the critically endangered smoky mouse. The cameras had been in the field for a year and the possum photos were taken last October. Dr Fred Ford, the senior threatened-species officer who made the discovery, said: 'It was amazing to see that distinctive bushy tail waving among the rows of images on the screen – it jumped right out at me.' The find came after a ground and aerial culling program removed 9036 wild horses from Kosciuszko National Park between November 2021 and April 30 this year. It is the first NSW sighting recorded since European settlement. Leadbeater's possums, which are critically endangered, were thought in the 1940s and 1950s to be extinct in Victoria before a small population was discovered in mountain ash forest near Marysville in 1961. Ecologist Professor David Lindenmayer from the Australian National University, who has spent decades studying the animals, said they favoured habitat with tall trees for nesting and wattle understorey for food sources. 'How exciting it is to live in a country where new discoveries are being made,' Lindemayer said. 'This discovery highlights the importance of large national parks for biodiversity.'
The Age
2 days ago
- The Age
There were no known sightings of this critically endangered animal outside Victoria. Now it's in NSW
A critically endangered Leadbeater's possum – previously thought to be extinct in NSW – has been discovered in Kosciuszko National Park, to the delight of ecologists. The discovery of the sole possum near the Yarrangobilly Caves indicates the presence of a colony of the tiny creatures, which weigh just 125 grams. The historic find was made last Monday during a review by threatened-species officers from the NSW environment department of almost 1 million images from wildlife cameras as they surveyed for the critically endangered smoky mouse. The cameras had been in the field for a year and the possum photos were taken last October. Dr Fred Ford, the senior threatened-species officer who made the discovery, said: 'It was amazing to see that distinctive bushy tail waving among the rows of images on the screen – it jumped right out at me.' The find came after a ground and aerial culling program removed 9036 wild horses from Kosciuszko National Park between November 2021 and April 30 this year. It is the first NSW sighting recorded since European settlement. Leadbeater's possums, which are critically endangered, were thought in the 1940s and 1950s to be extinct in Victoria before a small population was discovered in mountain ash forest near Marysville in 1961. Ecologist Professor David Lindenmayer from the Australian National University, who has spent decades studying the animals, said they favoured habitat with tall trees for nesting and wattle understorey for food sources. 'How exciting it is to live in a country where new discoveries are being made,' Lindemayer said. 'This discovery highlights the importance of large national parks for biodiversity.'
ABC News
3 days ago
- ABC News
Meet the NASA scientist tasked with identifying asteroids on a collision course with Earth
The bright green meteor that blazed a trail over the skies of southern WA earlier this month served as a spectacular reminder of just how vulnerable the Earth is to threats from space. Country police officer and amateur meteorite hunter Marcus Scott found a tennis ball sized piece of the space rock, dubbed the Mother's Day meteorite, in a salt lake about 460 kilometres east of Perth. Hollywood has taught us to fear giant 'planet killer' asteroids, but it's the smaller space rocks that could destroy an entire city. Thankfully, a NASA scientist is on the case, with the job of protecting the planet against such threats. Dr Kelly Fast oversees NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which is responsible for identifying and tracking asteroids, and figuring out if any of these rocky bodies could be on a collision course with Earth. Larger meteors can survive the trip through the atmosphere, often in spectacular fashion, like the Mother's Day meteorite which was estimated to be about half a metre in size. It slammed into the atmosphere above WA travelling at about 15 kilometres a second, before breaking up and landing in a salt lake in the Goldfields. Dr Fast and her colleagues around the world track more than 37,000 near-Earth asteroids, with the US Congress expecting NASA to find 90 per cent of asteroids larger than 140 metres. It's the smaller asteroids that pose the danger because they are harder to find, but could still destroy a land mass the size of an Australian city or even a state. "The asteroid hazard is a global issue. The first order of business is finding asteroids… it's the only natural disaster that you could potentially prevent," she said. Last year an asteroid named 2024 YR4 was discovered, with initial calculations indicating it could come dangerously close to Earth in just seven years' time. With a diameter of approximately 50 metres, if it struck the earth it could cause widespread devastation of a similar scale to the Tunguska event in Siberia in 1908. That explosion occurred over a sparsely populated area, flattening more than 2,000 square kilometres of forest. Dr Fast said there were a few different forms of technology that could potentially be used to neutralise the threat from an asteroid, and they all sound like they are straight out of a science fiction movie. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft slammed into the asteroid Dimorphous in September 2022, successfully changing the orbit of the 160-metre diameter celestial body. "That was the simplest technique — to impact an asteroid and change its speed, and it was successfully tested with DART," Dr Fast said. To date, it's been the only real world test to save the planet from destruction caused by a rogue space rock. Other techniques being studied include ion beam deflection, using a spacecraft to fire charged particles at the asteroid, giving it a slight nudge to change its orbit. The 'Star Trek' sounding "gravity tractor" is another possible solution, and entails parking an object next to the asteroid and using the slight change in gravity to change its orbit. "And then there's what we always like to call the Hollywood option, because it's what's always used in the movies — a nuclear deflection," Dr Fast said. Although she warned such a technique could create even more of a hazard from the debris field of an exploded asteroid. Dr Fast is hoping there won't be a need to use any of these techniques in our lifetime, but says developing the technology to protect the planet will be a gift for future generations. This week Dr Fast spoke at the Australian Space Awards in Sydney, where she emphasised Australia's importance in keeping the planet safe from the threat of asteroids. And while Australia might be half a world away from NASA headquarters in Washington D.C., two teams of Australian researchers form part of the International Asteroid Warning Network. The University of New South Wales Canberra team search for asteroids using optical telescopes as well as the Parkes Radio Telescope, famous for its role in broadcasting Neil Armstrong's moon walk. On the other side of the country, researchers at the University of Western Australia use the one-metre diameter Zadko Telescope, located about 70 kilometres north of Perth in Gingin, to scan the skies for threats from space. Hollywood-born Dr Fast has a degree in astrophysics and a doctorate in astronomy. She also has the honour of having a nearly three-kilometre diameter space rock named after her, Asteroid Kellyfast. "Like pretty much all asteroids that are named for people, let's hope it stays safely out in the main belt [of space]" she said with a laugh.
