The weather forecast center, MetService, said in a Twitter post that radar detected traces of meteor smoke.
The local geological agency, GeoNet, believes that its seismometer engine detected the sound of waves in the sky today at around 13:50 (local time).
According to an eye witness, Mike Cousin, who was working near Wellington at the time, saw the room lit up with blue-orange light.
“I ran out and saw the trail and then heard the roar of the plan, like the beginning of an earthquake,” he told Reuters.
Alan Gilmore, an astronomer at the University of Canterbury’s Mount John Observatory, explained that a bright meteor that passes through atmospheric space very quickly is a rare occurrence in urban areas.
“The radiation is very bright and it must be a fairly large object,” Gilmore said.
He added that the explosion that was heard from the meteor indicated that the meteor was at a distance of 60 kilometers from Earth.
Following the incident, there were no reports of meteors hitting land or sea and no debris was recovered from the object.
(wbs)
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