Brilliant Fireball Shatters New Zealand Skies

Fire is falling from the heavens once again, this time ending in a brilliant explosion over New Zealand.

A bright fireball was spotted in the great majority of the country around 10 PM (NZDT), with sightings from Whangarei in the north all the way to upper South Island.

According to the country's Weather Watch, the great majority of witnesses reported a huge blinding flash, and call-ins from around Waikato and South Auckland also reported sonic booms and even slight shaking.

"I was asleep and woke startled as I thought I was in a small earthquake," one unnamed citizen wrote on the Weather Watch site. "Blinds and doors were shaking... I live in rural South Auckland and [my] dogs and horses made some slightly distressed noises which you really don't get. It takes a lot to startle them!"

Another witness wrote in to tell how she could see the fireball's trail - of a green and orange hue - remain in the sky for minutes afterwards, indicating that if it was a natural meteor, it was a relatively big one. A lingering trail would mean that not only did the meteor ionize the air molecules around it, but it also got very deep into our atmosphere before burning up, leaving behind freshly released gases and glowing superheated particles that can be seen with the naked eye before they cool.

One citizen even caught the event on film thanks to his car's dashboard camera, and you can see for yourself how such a brilliant burn could light up the night sky for nearly a whole country. (Scroll to read on...)

According to the American Meteor Society, a fireball is another term for a meteor that is generally brighter than Venus in a clear night sky (magnitude -4). Sometimes these events are labeled as "bolides," or spectacular explosions in which the building forces of friction during decent suddenly become too much.

Shockwaves also hint that this was a relatively powerful bolide explosion. Had it been even more powerful, it could have damaged residential areas.

That's exactly what happened back in 2013, when a meteor estimated to be nearly 60 feet in diameter shattered with 30 times the force of the 1945 atomic bomb detonation on Hiroshima, Japan.

Thankfully, because of the angle and speed at which the space-rock was plummeting, it experienced an air-burst about 20 miles above Chelyabinsk, Russia.

Still, the resulting debris and powerful shockwave caused notable damage to the region.

"Recent research suggests that Chelyabinsk-type events occur every 30 to 40 years," researchers recently reported in an audit of NASA's near-Earth object (NEO) tracking program.

Worryingly, they noted that there is only a 10 percent chance that with current technologies, an asteroid of that size will be noticed in time to warn citizens. It's important to note, however, that most past bolides of this size have exploded over the ocean.

And thankfully it's quite a different story for "doomsday" size space-rocks (anything larger than 0.5 miles in diameter), which experts can detect with at least 95 percent accuracy, according to the report.

That means we'll have plenty of time to get our affairs in order and keep our fingers crossed for a Hollywood-style Armageddon miracle. How nice.

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