A meteor has caused what’s been described as a sonic boom that rattled houses across Victoria on Sunday night.<\/p>\n
Social media was flooded with reports of sightings from Victoria’s east through to Melbourne, Ballarat and Bendigo just after 7:30pm.<\/p>\n
Some residents also reported hearing an explosion \u2014 described by some as a “sonic boom” \u2014 with one observer in the Bendigo suburb of Strathfieldsaye saying she called her neighbour thinking their house had exploded.<\/p>\n
Others reported what felt and sounded like an earthquake.<\/p>\n
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Social media has been flooded with sightings of the meteor across Victoria. (Supplied: Dwayne Rollings)<\/p>\n
Experts say the fireball was a meteor and not space junk, and that fragments may have landed on the ground between Bendigo and Ballarat.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
He said it was large and very bright.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
“It was huge. I haven’t seen many but this was like a large object and it was bright red.”<\/p>\n
Talkback caller Justin said he witnessed the object in Ballarat.<\/p>\n
“It was just so bright,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I could see it slowly moving across and then it just went straight, fast down to wherever it went.<\/p>\n
“I honestly thought it was a plane crash.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“The house seemed to lift up and drop down again.”<\/p>\n
Geoscience Australia said it received multiple reports from Bendigo but no seismic event was recorded.<\/p>\n
Meteorites could be found in central Victoria, experts say<\/p>\n
Amateur astronomer David Finlay runs the Australian Meteor Reports page on Facebook.<\/p>\n
He believed the meteor entered Earth’s atmosphere between Bendigo and Ballarat and was large enough for fragments to survive vaporisation.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
“We think that there’s potentially meteorites on the ground somewhere right now in country Victoria.”<\/p>\n
“That’s why this event is so important to us.”<\/p>\n
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Amateur astronomer David Finlay says fragments of the meteor could have fallen on properties between Bendigo and Ballarat. (Supplied: David Finlay)<\/p>\n
He said sonic booms from meteors were rare, with Australia recording only one or two events like this a year.<\/p>\n
“Descriptions of that have been from it sounds like thunder to it literally sounded like an explosion,” he said.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“It’s probably the most studied meteorite on the planet because it contains carbonaceous chondrites,” he said.<\/p>\n