A meteor streaked across the southern sky in a dazzling blaze of colour on Saturday night.
At least four people in Otago and Canterbury reported seeing the meteor just after 9pm, describing it as a sudden flash of colour which lit up the sky, the resident superintendent at Canterbury University's MtJohn Observatory, Alan Gilmour, told NZPA.
The meteor was reported from as far as Dunedin and Timaru, Twizel and Rangiora, but it was likely to have been "at least" 200km to 300km west of the South Island's east coast, he said.
"It was obviously bright...It was multicoloured too. It sounds like it put on quite a display of colours."
One witness said the streak, which lasted two or three seconds, "lit up the clouds" in a flash of light.
Based on the reports Mr Gilmour estimated the meteor was between 70km and 100km above earth, travelling about 10 kilometres per second and as large as a basketball.
While bright ones were rarely seen, meteors -- "random lumps of rock or metal" which burn up in the atmosphere, throwing off colour and light -- were common phenomena, he said.
Earlier this month a mysterious explosion heard over Hawke's Bay was reported to have been a fist-sized fragment of asteroid entering the atmosphere.
Two weeks ago a 4.5 billion year old meteorite crashed through the roof of an Auckland home, after an estimated journey of 700 million kilometres.
