22-05-2019, 11:51 AM
Meteor has 'vaporised' over South Australia
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"Astronomer" David Finlay, who administrates the Australia Meteor Report Facebook page, said he believed people had seen a small meteor.
"It's pretty obvious that it's a meteor. It's small asteroid that's created this and has started to vaporise over the skies of South Australia," he said.
"From every indication so far, the bits of dashcam footage coming, and importantly, the reports of a sonic boom, all those are evidence that lead us to believe that this may have survived to the ground. It just depends where it's landed.
"It's splitting up into different pieces … it gets a lot brighter and that's what people are seeing.
"We've actually got anecdotal evidence that for the last couple of years the earth has been bombarded by probably twice as many of these small asteroids than what we usually get."
Flinders University space archaeologist Dr Alice Gorman said after seeing the footage she also believed it was a meteor.
She said this occasion was one of the lucky times that a large meteor had entered the atmosphere during the night.
"One of the interesting things about meteors is most of them enter the atmosphere during the day so people don't see them," Dr Gorman said.
"[But] several times a year there will be an event that is seen by a lot of people that is quite visible and quite spectacular."
POPULAR ON ABC NEWS:
"Astronomer" David Finlay, who administrates the Australia Meteor Report Facebook page, said he believed people had seen a small meteor.
"It's pretty obvious that it's a meteor. It's small asteroid that's created this and has started to vaporise over the skies of South Australia," he said.
"From every indication so far, the bits of dashcam footage coming, and importantly, the reports of a sonic boom, all those are evidence that lead us to believe that this may have survived to the ground. It just depends where it's landed.
"It's splitting up into different pieces … it gets a lot brighter and that's what people are seeing.
"We've actually got anecdotal evidence that for the last couple of years the earth has been bombarded by probably twice as many of these small asteroids than what we usually get."
Flinders University space archaeologist Dr Alice Gorman said after seeing the footage she also believed it was a meteor.
She said this occasion was one of the lucky times that a large meteor had entered the atmosphere during the night.
"One of the interesting things about meteors is most of them enter the atmosphere during the day so people don't see them," Dr Gorman said.
"[But] several times a year there will be an event that is seen by a lot of people that is quite visible and quite spectacular."