Meteor spotted over New Zealand

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Around 10 p.m. last night, a “blinding” blue and white flash lit up the night sky in New Zealand.

People all over the country started buzzing about the sighting online.

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Police received about 80 calls reporting the sighting.

Josh Sherbourne captured the bright flash on his dash cam and uploaded it to YouTube.

“On my way to the gym when bam this comes out of no where,” Sherborne wrote. “I actually thought it was lightning.”

Friends Fletcher Hodge, 33, and Michael Mckee, 30, witnessed what they first thought was a shooting star from their moving vehicle.

"The next minute it was practically at the right hand side…like only 200-300 metres away. It came in slow then sped up. There were big bright blue flashes and then it went straight down into a gully," Hodges told the New Zealand Herald.

"I was quite freaked out. I was like, what the hell…this is the end.”

"I’ve seen shooting stars and comets break up but I have never been so close in my life. It was like looking out at a street light from your house and it looked closer than a street light,” he added.

According to Pukekoke resident Kathryn Logan, it felt like her house was rattled by an explosion:

"Out the window I saw a very bright flashing light then approximately five minutes later our house was shaken by what felt like an explosion."

Hamilton man Sam McCreary recalled:

"I was standing outside my place in Hamilton at roughly 10pm and saw what I thought was an explosion in the sky. Looked like a big fireball.”

This morning, experts are agreeing that the bright explosion and thunderous sonic booms can be attributed to a meteor.

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The official twitter account for Auckland Civil Defence & Emergency Management said the burst of light was “definitely not lightning, most likely a #meteor.”

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"This was an exceptionally bright flash of light across the country, with many people saying they heard sonic booms that scared them and the animals," said Weather Watch head weather analyst Philip Duncan.

Joel Schiff, a meteorite expert and former publisher of Meteorite Magazine, said that the online footage appears to show “almost certainly some extra terrestrial material.”

"It’s either that or it’s going to be space craft debris," he told the New Zealand Herald, calling the explosion a fire ball.

"Meteors are just those little streaks of light that people see every night of the week, they’re just the size of a grain of sand and they come generally from comets. They have nothing to do with this episode,” he said.

"This is different, you would call this a fire ball, and when it lands on the ground it becomes a meteorite."

According to Noel Munford of the Palmerston North Astronomical Society, the meter would have been traveling at about 144,000 km/h.

He said these events likely occur five or six times a year, but half occur during the day.

"What makes this more spectacular is that it happens at night. This thing got brighter than the full moon,” he told Newstalk ZB.

It has yet to be determined if any space debris made it to Earth.

“Most meteoroids burn up before impact so if any make it to land that’s exciting,” said Schiff, encouraging people to be on the lookout for “really black rocks.”

Stardome astronomer Dr. Grant Christie believes that, according to the trajectory of the meteor, it was actually heading hundreds of kilometres east of New Zealand’s borders. He doubts any debris will be found in the country.

In New Zealand, only nine found objects have ever been confirmed as having come from space, the New Zealand Herald reports.