Twitter and the New Zealand subreddit are tonight abuzz with talk of a brilliant flash above Auckland. Was it blue? Orange? White? A combination of the above? On this, Twitter is in disagreement. But everyone agrees on one thing: it seems to have been a meteor (or a meteorite – I used to know the difference, but now I don’t).
One tweeter (twit? Twitterer?) has been credited with the First Meteor Tweet: @iHavill. He tweeted, at 10.01PM:
“HOLY CRAP massive meteorite crash just north of Cambridge. Just lit up the entire sky infront of me. Left a green trail through the sky”
And then at 10.15, “It probably all burnt up but it came very low on the horizon. Was going straight down in front of me as I was driving along.”
It seems, from this, that debris has not hit the ground (but having said that, has somebody checked on the condition of Cambridge?). Hard to know exactly what the experts think, because weatherwatch.co.nz is down. According to reddit, they have a report on the meteor[ite], so that might be worth checking up on once they’re back online.
This is not our one. It’s from Google images. Finding it, I discovered that aside from meteors and meteorITES, there’s also something called a meteorOID. So, I give up.
I saw the meteor. I was at my computer when a big blue flash lit up the window, and I said to my partner, “That was lightning!” It did seem somewhat out of place in our perfectly still night, so there we go. How fortunate that I’m not a meteorologist. Guess I’ll stick to my day job.
