{"id":663066,"date":"2026-05-11T03:29:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T03:29:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/663066\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T03:29:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T03:29:11","slug":"traffic-camera-captures-huge-and-so-bright-so-fast-meteor-over-tasmania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/663066\/","title":{"rendered":"Traffic camera captures ‘huge and so bright, so fast’ meteor over Tasmania"},"content":{"rendered":"

The bright flash and trail of a meteor across the night sky was seen across Tasmania on Sunday.<\/p>\n

A traffic camera from Launceston, in the state’s north, captured the event just before 9:30pm. The bright light was also seen in southern parts of Tasmania.<\/p>\n

“The object flashed a few times as it was coming down, almost certainly because it was breaking up and the light sort of came and went and left a bit of a trail,” said Martin George, the principal astronomer of the Ulverstone Planetarium at Hive Tasmania.<\/p>\n

“This is very typical of an object burning up in the atmosphere, a natural object.”<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

An astrophotographer says the light emitted by the meteor turned his photograph of the Milky Way green. (Supplied: Robbie Moles)<\/p>\n

People from across the state posted comments on TassieCam’s traffic camera video, which was shared on Facebook.<\/p>\n

“Spectacular display. Lots of falling stars on Saturday night as well,” Kim wrote.<\/p>\n

“Saw it in Kingston was huge and so bright and so fast,” Nardia wrote.<\/p>\n

Meteor showers and moons: What’s in the sky in May<\/a><\/p>\n

The Moon will outshine May’s annual meteor shower, but there are other things to look for in the sky this month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Astrophysicist Brittany Trubody said the meteor was “quite likely a remnant from the recent Eta Aquariids<\/a> meteor shower, produced by debris from Halley’s Comet”.<\/p>\n

Dr George said meteors could be surprisingly small.<\/p>\n

“Some people might think it’s a really large object to be so bright. Interestingly enough, even an object as bright as the full moon as it comes down is probably no bigger than a cricket ball or a softball.<\/p>\n

“That’s the kind of size of object that I would estimate it to be based on the video \u2026 Unfortunately, I missed it myself, but it would have been a spectacular sight.”<\/p>\n

Astrophotographer Robbie Moles was at Seven Mile Beach, near Hobart airport, when “everything just lit up green”.<\/p>\n

“Out of the corner of my eye I saw a big, very bright, green flash,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It lasted for all of half a second. Just before it disappeared it started to break up.”<\/p>\n

Mr Moles was taking a long exposure photograph of the Milky Way when the meteor passed overhead, out of frame.<\/p>\n

He said he had seen some fireballs in his time, but “nothing that bright”.<\/p>\n

“It literally lit up the whole sky green,” he said.<\/p>\n

Dr George said it was likely the meteor broke up at an altitude of about 30 kilometres.<\/p>\n

“That doesn’t mean to say that a meteorite hasn’t fallen to Earth, but \u2026 most of the objects are completely destroyed before they get to the surface.”<\/p>\n

Dr George said the people who saw the meteor were “very lucky”.<\/p>\n

“You had to be out at the right time, looking in the right direction.<\/p>\n

“And these objects are completely unpredictable. They’re random objects that are orbiting the Sun and meet their end when they meet the Earth.<\/p>\n

“So you just have to keep your eyes peeled on the sky as much as you can. [It’s] much more interesting than being indoors all evening.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The bright flash and trail of a meteor across the night sky was seen across Tasmania on Sunday.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,92257,320212,28289,35062,128,230397,12773,285,144154,8539,2801],"class_list":["post-663066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-flash","tag-light-up","tag-meteor","tag-night","tag-science","tag-seen","tag-sky","tag-space","tag-sunday-night","tag-tas","tag-tasmania"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663066","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=663066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}