A glowing green object spotted blasting out of the sky over Queenstown's Lake Wakatipu early yesterday was most likely a high-flying meteor burning up in the atmosphere, an astronomer says.
Lee Fisher (23), of Queenstown, said he spotted the object as he drove through the Devils Staircase section of State Highway 6 towards Kingston at 6.50am yesterday.
The large glowing green ball, trailing a green smokey tail, appeared in the sky in front of his utility vehicle and seemed to shoot down into Lake Wakatipu in a westerly direction, he said.
The object made no noise and Mr Fisher said he had no idea what it was.
‘‘I have seen shooting stars before but this was just huge,'' he said.
Mr Fisher immediately pulled over and called his fiancee, Nicola Mitchell, in Queenstown, and his parents in Dunedin, who were initially sceptical.
‘‘It was as if they didn't believe me at first. I had to swear on my Nan's grave,'' he said.
Mt John Observatory astronomer and resident superintendent Alan Gilmore said when contacted that the description of the object bore the classic characteristics of a meteor burning up in the Earth's atmosphere.
However, it was ‘‘extremely doubtful'' the meteor had crashed into Lake Wakatipu, he said.
The glowing emerald green colour was caused by the gases and metals within the object's core burning up as it hit the top edge of the Earth's atmosphere.
Most objects would vaporise while still high up, and those large enough to survive to within 60km of the Earth's surface could be heard on the ground.
There were also numerous documented examples of a visual illusion experienced by those who witnessed glowing and fast moving meteors, which tricked the human eye into thinking the object landed nearby.
The object was most likely to be about the size of a cricket ball or baseball, chipped off an asteroid circling in space and travelling at up to 30km per second as it hit the Earth's atmosphere. Similar objects were ‘‘very frequent'' in New Zealand's skies.
The observatory had received no other reports of yesterday's object, probably due to cloud cover in the region at the time.
‘‘If the sky had been generally clear, I think we would have had a lot more reports from people around the place.''
