Fireballs Aotearoa, the public face of a citizen camera network monitoring meteors, told 1News the streak of light was seen over the upper North Island at around 8.35pm. <\/p>\n
![\"Tuesday](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/tuesday-nights-fireball-seen-from-kaharoa-rotorua-YVK3PVEGLJAZ5BXY65BS7R3UMQ.png\")
<\/p>\n
Tuesday night’s fireball seen from Kaharoa, Rotorua. (Source: Supplied)<\/p>\n
It shared photos showing the bright trail over Whang\u0101rei Heads in Northland, Rotorua in Bay of Plenty, and Waikato’s Crystal Lake Observatory. <\/p>\n
A spokesperson said that data was still being uploaded, but if a meteorite resulted from the fireball, it would have likely landed in the ocean west of Auckland. <\/p>\n
Hastings resident Jacqueline Cheer said she saw the fireball when it first appeared towards Fernhill, describing it as being like a “rainbow flashing across the sky”. <\/p>\n
![\"Tuesday](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/tuesday-nights-fireball-seen-from-waikatos-crystal-lake-obse-TGGHEKLRIJCITIVM6PCLMF7BEA.png\")
<\/p>\n
Tuesday night’s fireball seen from Waikato’s Crystal Lake Observatory. (Source: Supplied)<\/p>\n
“It was really beautiful.” <\/p>\n
Tuesday’s fireball appeared over the North Island at around 10.26pm, with some describing a “boom”. <\/p>\n
Steve Wyn-Harris of Fireballs Aotearoa said there were some “exciting possibilities” with Tuesday’s shooting star. <\/p>\n
People with their eyes to the night sky were treated to a flash of light as a bright fireball appeared to streak across the lower North Island last night. (Source: Supplied)<\/p>\n
He said people hearing a boom “tells us that it got low enough into the upper atmosphere to potentially drop a meteorite or meteorites onto the ground”.<\/p>\n
Once analysis is done, “we will have a much clearer idea whether this meteoroid got low enough and slow enough to stop burning up, go into dark flight, and also where it might have landed”.<\/p>\n
He said there was a “rough idea” of where it may have landed, but could not share any details until there was more data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Another “beautiful” fireball was seen streaking across North Island skies last night. It was spotted after one lit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69,392],"class_list":["post-550342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}