A meteor has caused what’s been described as a sonic boom that rattled houses across Victoria on Sunday night.
Social media was flooded with reports of sightings from Victoria’s east through to Melbourne, Ballarat and Bendigo just after 7:30pm.
Some residents also reported hearing an explosion — described by some as a “sonic boom” — with one observer in the Bendigo suburb of Strathfieldsaye saying she called her neighbour thinking their house had exploded.
Others reported what felt and sounded like an earthquake.
Social media has been flooded with sightings of the meteor across Victoria. (Supplied: Dwayne Rollings)
Experts say the fireball was a meteor and not space junk, and that fragments may have landed on the ground between Bendigo and Ballarat.
ABC Radio Melbourne listener Andrew said he was with a group of colleagues finishing their dinner break in Port Melbourne when they saw the meteor pass above the West Gate Bridge.
He said it was large and very bright.
“We actually thought someone played a joke by, I don’t know, setting fire to something and throwing it over our heads or something like that,” he said.
“It was huge. I haven’t seen many but this was like a large object and it was bright red.”
Talkback caller Justin said he witnessed the object in Ballarat.
“It was just so bright,” he said.
“I could see it slowly moving across and then it just went straight, fast down to wherever it went.
“I honestly thought it was a plane crash.”
Sue from Woodend, north-west of Melbourne, described the sound as a “terrific thump”, causing her to think there had been an explosion at a nearby quarry.
“The house seemed to lift up and drop down again.”
Geoscience Australia said it received multiple reports from Bendigo but no seismic event was recorded.
Meteorites could be found in central Victoria, experts say
Amateur astronomer David Finlay runs the Australian Meteor Reports page on Facebook.
He believed the meteor entered Earth’s atmosphere between Bendigo and Ballarat and was large enough for fragments to survive vaporisation.
“This is probably a rock anywhere from between the size of a grapefruit up to maybe even the size of a wheelbarrow,” Mr Finlay said.
“We think that there’s potentially meteorites on the ground somewhere right now in country Victoria.”
“That’s why this event is so important to us.”
Amateur astronomer David Finlay says fragments of the meteor could have fallen on properties between Bendigo and Ballarat. (Supplied: David Finlay)
He said sonic booms from meteors were rare, with Australia recording only one or two events like this a year.
“Descriptions of that have been from it sounds like thunder to it literally sounded like an explosion,” he said.
“That in itself leads us to believe this is an event of a large enough size that it was big enough to produce meteorites on the ground.”
He said a confirmed discovery of a meteorite could be the most significant event for scientific research since the 1969 Murchison meteorite, also in Victoria.
“It’s probably the most studied meteorite on the planet because it contains carbonaceous chondrites,” he said.
When a space visitor came to country Victoria
“It contains actually the building blocks of life — amino acids and things like that. There’s huge scientific research that’s gone into studying the Murchison meteorite.”
Mr Finlay said fragments would look like black rock, similar to a charcoal briquette.
He said the outside surface would be worn smooth, but it would not be perfectly round.
“It’ll look like it’s been burnt so it’ll have an outside fusion crust that is black,” he said.
“If it’s a stony meteorite, the inside will actually be a very light colour, like a grey colour.”
Associate Professor of Astronomy at Monash University, Michael Brown, agreed it was an extraordinary event.
“It’s unusual to see one this bright and it’s unusual to hear one,” he said.
“Normally when there’s meteors, people don’t get to hear the sonic boom and the sonic boom suggests that this meteor was quite low down and it’s possible that pieces of it reached the ground.”
He said the fragments would not be easy to find.
“People should be a little bit careful going hunting for meteorites unless they know exactly what they’re looking for because there’s a lot of rocks out there in Victoria,” he said.
“It could have put a hole in someone’s shed or something like that but not exactly a Hollywood disaster movie.”