{"id":110592,"date":"2025-09-01T10:59:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T10:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/110592\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T10:59:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T10:59:11","slug":"wa-residents-in-awe-as-rare-cricket-ball-sized-meteor-illuminates-skies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/110592\/","title":{"rendered":"WA residents in awe as rare cricket ball-sized meteor illuminates skies"},"content":{"rendered":"

A meteor has illuminated the skies above WA<\/a> into a bright burst of colour.<\/p>\n

Perth<\/a> Observatory\u2019s Matthew Woods said the fleeting spectacle happened about 6.30pm on Sunday night, with locals in the Perth and Mid West<\/a> regions witnessing the cosmic fireball.<\/p>\n

He said the meteor was likely about the size of a cricket ball.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you\u2019re seeing is basically the fiery death of rocky or icy material … burning up in the atmosphere,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s heated up due to friction and it\u2019s melted away, so I would say it\u2019s just dust in our atmosphere now.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s burnt up quite high in the atmosphere because a lot of Western Australia has been able to see it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had reports of someone further up from Geraldton saying they actually heard the bang and it alerted the sheep and dogs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Woods said meteor sightings were rare, with most shooting over the ocean.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you were to stay in one place on Earth for an entire lifetime, you would probably get to see two or three (meteors), because the Earth is mostly water,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do get hit by about 100,000 tonnes of material every year.<\/p>\n

\u201cFireballs are rareish, but most of the time you don\u2019t see them because they happen over the ocean.\u201d<\/p>\n

It comes just weeks after a meteor flashed through Perth about 9.30pm on August 6.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis object was a fragile cometary fragment, a piece of icy, dusty debris left over from the early stages of the Solar System,\u201d Perth Observatory said at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs it hit our atmosphere, it began to heat up and break apart, producing a series of dazzling flashes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe entire light show ended at an altitude of 69 km, with the object destroyed; no fragments reached the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A meteor has illuminated the skies above WA into a bright burst of colour. Perth Observatory\u2019s Matthew Woods…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,44,46,128,285,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-110592","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-perth","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-space","14":"tag-wa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}