http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2600500a11,00.html
Great ball of fire lights up Aucklanders' lives www.stuff.co.nz 06 August 2003 A spectacular fireball blazed across the northern sky yesterday, a piece of the more than 30,000 tonnes of the normally invisible space junk that hits Earth each year. Observers in Auckland and from as far away as Whangarei described a flaming, bright-red fireball with a long white tail shooting across the sky from the northeast just before 6pm. One man in Auckland suburb Orakei, who reported the sight to One Tree Hill Stardome Observatory, said the meteor appeared to remain bright as it disappeared over the horizon. Another man, who was driving towards the Auckland Harbour Bridge, said it was "amazing". "I saw the white light first and then it flared into a green flash. I've never seen a green like it before." Stardome spokeswoman Angela Doherty said the fireball, described as having a "lingering white tail", was a piece of either human space junk or space rock "that wandered just a bit too close to Earth". Wellington's Carter Observatory spokesman John Field said it would be difficult to gauge the size of the meteor but said it could have been as big as a fist or the size of a person's head. No one had been killed by a meteor but in 1911 one was blamed for causing the death of a dog, he said. Most space debris simply fell harmlessly and invisibly to the ground, heating up and burning as it entered the atmosphere before dropping to earth. ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
