news@tvnz.co.nz<\/a><\/p>\nAmal Prasad and his wife Priyanka were heading out on a late-night Maccas run from Lower Hutt when they saw a “bright ray of light” appear across the sky.<\/p>\n
He told 1News they were confused by the sighting at first.<\/p>\n
“I initially thought it was a reflection from another vehicle’s headlights, but the light got bright very quickly, leaving a long streak of different colours across the sky,” Prasad said.<\/p>\n
“It was a crazy sight, and we were absolutely stoked to see it. When we got back home I checked dash-cam footage and was happy to see it caught it too.”<\/p>\n
University of Auckland physics professor Richard Easther said early indications strongly suggested the object was a meteor.<\/p>\n
![\"University](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/university-of-auckland-physics-professor-richard-easther-XUAYTE7WCRC7HB726UHK53GOQY.jpg\")
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University of Auckland physics professor Richard Easther. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n
“It’s looking very much like it was a space rock rather than space junk,” he said. “Sometimes called a bolide \u2014 a really bright meteorite.”<\/p>\n
Easther said an event of this brightness would involve a larger\u2011than\u2011usual meteorite and may only occur every few years in New Zealand skies. <\/p>\n
Such objects are remnants from the formation of the solar system around 4.5 billion years ago.<\/p>\n
Fireballs Aotearoa confirmed two separate fireballs were detected last night \u2014 one around 10pm over Manawat\u016b\u2011Whanganui, and another around 11.30pm visible from Wellington and the upper South Island.<\/p>\n
Network observer Steve Wyn\u2011Harris said their cameras suggest the later fireball travelled near Banks Peninsula.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe one people in Wellington reported seeing was around Banks Peninsula,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s most likely that one landed in the sea.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A dazzling fireball lit up the night sky over the capital late on Friday night, stunning residents and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,47024,128,285,73925,25904],"class_list":{"0":"post-450480","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-nelson","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-space","13":"tag-tasman","14":"tag-wellington"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450480","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=450480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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