A meteroid which flew over the South Island sky late last Friday night is not being searched for.
The fireball broke through the atmosphere near Wānaka overnight Friday with a loud sonic boom.
The meteoroid became a fireball and raced above Queenstown around 11pm, before burning out.
Fireballs Aotearoa, a group interested in meteorites, said a sonic boom was widely reported as the object came in overhead.
Although most of its mass burned up in the fireball stage, it was believed a small meteorite may have landed in a remote portion of the Eyre Mountains in northern Southland.
Spokesman Steve Wyn-Harris said there was too much cloud cover to get specifics on its location.
"We haven't got a lot of cameras with good data to really pinpoint the exact location."
"So because of that, at this stage unless we get better data, we won't be setting up a search expedition for it in the Eyre Mountains."
The group was still asking for public input.
The University of Otago's Dr Marshall Palmer, of the geology department, was part of the team which found a meteorite last year. But he was not confident of finding this one.
"My understanding is that Fireballs Aotearoa will not be organising a public search, as our calculations suggest that the meteorite is very small and that it would have landed somewhere in the Eyre Mountains, which is extremely difficult terrain to search for a meteorite.
"We also had some trouble tracking it because there was a lot of cloud cover blocking our cameras at the time, so any detailed modelling of the flight path would be relatively imprecise compared to what would be required
for a search in that area." - APL
