A bright fireball has been captured on security footage streaking across the night sky over rural Ōpōtiki.
The “very bright” fireball was captured on Tauranga Astronomical Society president David Greig’s security cameras shortly before 11pm on Wednesday.
Greig told 1News that the bright moonlight and very sensitive camera made the the sky and foreground in the video almost look like daytime.
“If it hadn’t been a moonlit night, [the fireball] would have looked so much more spectacular,” he said.
Greig said despite the moon, the fireball was still “brighter than most of the meteors that we could capture on our cameras”.
He said it was “up there with some of the the best” he had seen in the 40 years he had spent gazing skyward.
“Most of the time we’re not out there looking at the sky to see it, but we have an increasing network of cameras in New Zealand and around the world.”
He said there were now 154 cameras on our network in New Zealand, and there had been 10,785 meteors detected over New Zealand in February 2025 alone.
“It is interesting to note that our cameras can only detect these meteors during the darkness of night, and only when the sky is clear (or partially clear). I would estimate that the true number per month is approximately triple the count shown,” Greig said.
He said the vast majority of these meteors burn up in the upper atmosphere (between 70km – 100km up), and that very few meteors that do make it to the ground are then called “meteorites” which are then recovered.
Tonight, a total lunar eclipse would turn the moon a striking “blood” red colour as it passed into Earth’s shadow in the early evening.
The eclipse would begin as soon as the moon rose at 7.38pm, would reach its totality between 8pm and 8.30pm, and would end by 11pm.
Greig said he was “nervously watching the weather forecast” ahead of the lunar phenomenon.
“[I’m] hoping it’s going to be clear, we will be opening the observatory down at the Tauranga Astronomical Society observatory, weather permitting, and hoping to watch the moon rising from about 7.30pm tonight.”
Greig said if people wanted to a report a meteor sighting they could do so here.