{"id":597684,"date":"2026-05-22T08:46:03","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T08:46:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/597684\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T08:46:03","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T08:46:03","slug":"sydney-meteor-the-three-critical-rules-if-you-find-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/597684\/","title":{"rendered":"Sydney meteor: The three critical rules if you find it"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In an era when many stargazers are wasting their shooting-star wishes on falling space junk, what blazed across eastern Australian skies on Thursday night<\/a> was a bona fide meteor \u2013 an exploding offcut of an asteroid or comet.<\/p>\n

Early speculation has put the object at the size of a basketball, which rocketed to Earth on the faster end of a meteor\u2019s speed range, between about 11 and 72 kilometres per second.<\/p>\n

\"AA meteor lights up the Sydney sky on Thursday night.Nine<\/p>\n

Experts are now analysing its trajectory to offer official estimates. The technical term for a meteor brighter than Venus is a \u201cfireball\u201d, said astronomer Professor Jonti Horner.<\/p>\n

The meteor let off an explosive flash, which was captured from Bondi to regional NSW and Canberra.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we see one that has a very notable explosion then we call that a bolide. That\u2019s just a technical term for \u2018explodey meteor\u2019,\u201d Horner, from the University of Southern Queensland, said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019ve got an explosion, that means the thing has broken apart and has disintegrated, right?\u201d Horner said.<\/p>\n

The detonation indicates the meteor was probably rocky or icy in nature, as opposed to a rarer iron meteor.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe meteor\u2019s explosive flash was seen around Sydney and Canberra.Nine News<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looked to me to be a bit quicker than some of the other fireballs that we\u2019ve seen. That suggests either that it\u2019s coming in at a really steep angle, which is possible, or that it\u2019s coming in at a high velocity, or a combination of both,\u201d Horner said.<\/p>\n

\u201cA higher velocity probably means it\u2019s moving on a more elongated orbit around the sun, so it might have the possibility of being cometary in origin rather than asteroidal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Comets are \u201cdirty snowballs\u201d of ice and dust that give off streaking tails as they pass the sun, just like the recent C\/2025 R3 PanSTARRS comet<\/a>. Asteroids, on the other hand, are hurtling space rocks.<\/p>\n

\"MostMost meteors are chunks of asteroids but last night\u2019s may have come from an icy comet, similar to the C\/2025 R3 PanSTARRS comet that just crossed Australian skies.Wikimedia<\/p>\n

When an object in space hits Earth\u2019s atmosphere it becomes a meteor, and if it strikes Earth it\u2019s called a meteorite.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s largely a myth you can tell what a meteor is made of depending on the colour of its glow, despite claims a greenish glow might indicate nickel, iron or magnesium.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe green colour is going to come from the excitation of atmospheric oxygen because a lot of the light is from the superheated air, not from the thing itself burning up,\u201d Horner said.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Dr Rachel Kirby, lead geochemist for the Desert Fireball Network, agreed and said spectral cameras can detect what elements make up a meteor\u2019s surface but the constellation of phones and dashcams that recorded the spectacle last night cannot.<\/p>\n

\u201c[About] 95 per cent or so of that light is from the surrounding atmosphere, not from the meteor itself,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Space junk travels much slower than a meteor, which is why it burns orange-red rather than blue-green.<\/p>\n

Most meteors originate from the asteroid belt orbiting between Jupiter and Mars. Some are called carbonaceous chondrites, which are stony asteroid fragments.<\/p>\n

\u201cChondrites are really valuable to scientists because they\u2019re pieces that have gone relatively undisturbed since the formation of the solar system,\u201d Horner said.<\/p>\n

\"CarbonaceousCarbonaceous chondrite meteors are often scorched black, and may look unusual compared to surrounding rocks.Wikimedia<\/p>\n

Other metallic meteorites may come from large asteroids 200 to 300 kilometres across, or protoplanets. These cosmic bodies are big enough to have heat build in their bellies and the beginnings of molten metallic cores.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou get effectively an object with a core, a mantle and a crust, just like the Earth. Iron-nickel meteorites are fragments of the cores of these objects,\u201d Horner said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are also the \u2018stony irons\u2019, which can be really beautiful. They have metal interwoven between rock on that boundary between the core and the mantle, so you\u2019ve got a bit of both mixed together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thursday night\u2019s meteor probably exploded over the ocean, taking its secrets with it, unlike the Perth Mother\u2019s Day meteor that the Desert Fireball Network managed to track down for analysis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But for people who suspect they\u2019ve discovered a freshly fallen meteor chunk, Horner said there are some key rules to observe.<\/p>\n

\"AnAn example of a \u2018stony iron\u2019 meteorite, with a mix of nickel, iron and silicates.Wikimedia<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat they should do is imagine it\u2019s dog poo,\u201d he said, and collect it with a bag so you avoid contamination.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t test it with a magnet, either, to see if there\u2019s metal \u2013 this can erase fossilised evidence of magnetic fields, which scientists can detect to see what kind of asteroid it may have come from.<\/p>\n

Finally, stick it in the freezer, which will preserve precious evidence of space water.<\/p>\n

Kirby said the vast majority of \u201cmeteors\u201d people report are simply rocks but it\u2019s worth adhering to these rules if you\u2019re in the known \u201cstrewn field\u201d, or landing zone, of a recent meteor.<\/p>\n

Analyses of meteors and meteorites can reveal much about the cosmos.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe use a mix of the trajectory analysis but also the chemistry to work out, did it come from Mars? Did it come from the moon or the asteroid belt?\u201d Kirby said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are samples that sometimes are as old as our solar system itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Examine newsletter explains and analyses science with a rigorous focus on the evidence. Sign up to get it each week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"AngusAngus Dalton<\/a> is the science reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-597684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}