On August 28, just before 11 pm, a huge event They saw a line of light He leaped across the southern sky of New Zealand, followed by a thunderous explosion. The scene, which resembled a brushstroke of white paint on black ink, was captured by 20 high-tech cameras set up just for the occasion. A meteorite entered the atmosphere over New Zealand.
Trace where it fell
The next morning, eyewitness accounts and CCTV footage began pouring into a group called the Fireballs Aotearoa, a recently formed organization of geologists, astronomers, and citizen scientists. The group wasn’t sure what they saw at first – the flash was so bright and large that some camera shots mistook it for the moon. Later that evening, after analyzing the footage, the group realized that it was actually a very large meteorite.
A few days after a fireball smashed into the sky, a team of 22 geologists from the University of Otago set out to find a rare and precious space rock that could help research the formation of the Solar System.
Its weight has also been compromised
The guardian By analyzing footage from the network of meteor monitoring cameras, scientists were able to predict that the meteorite, which weighed between 1 and 30 kilograms, might have fallen 20 kilometers west of Dunedin.
Only nine confirmed meteorites have been discovered in New Zealand in the past 150 years, but many have fallen and have never been found. New Zealand’s population is small, so most meteorites entering the atmosphere are unlikely to be detected, rugged terrain and timber can hamper the search for debris, and there is a lack of infrastructure to help locate the landing site.
