\u201cThey\u2019re not dangerous. They won\u2019t be particularly hot or cold at this stage but there\u2019s a lot of rocks out there in rural Victoria, so trying to identify a meteor amongst them can be pretty tricky,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are lots of surveillance videos that seem to have picked it up, dash-cams too, so they might help narrow down where it\u2019s landed. It will also depend on the terrain where it landed as to whether these chunks of rock can be found.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown said if any meteorites landed, they would probably be centimetres in size.<\/p>\n
Brown also recalled a Canadian family\u2019s house camera captured a meteorite landing near the front door last year. It was the first time such an event was caught on camera.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you have a look at that video, it\u2019s not exactly an asteroid disaster movie, it\u2019s much more of a curiosity,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n
The Perseid meteor shower is expected to peak on Wednesday and Thursday, so astronomers were expecting to see activity in Australian skies.<\/p>\n
But Astronomer Perry Vlahos told this masthead that Sunday night\u2019s sighting was not part of any meteor shower such as the Perseids or Alpha Capricornids.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis would be what\u2019s called a \u2018sporadic meteor\u2019, which refers to all meteors we see with a non-specific origin,\u201d Vlahos said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason it\u2019s not a Perseid is because the \u2018radiant\u2019 \u2013 the point the meteors appear to radiate out from \u2013 never rises above the horizon for us at the latitude of Victoria.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn order for it to be one, it would have to be travelling upward from horizon to zenith …which is not what was observed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vlahos added it was a meteor, not a meteorite as it hadn\u2019t hit the ground as of the information available on Sunday night, but astronomers were still reviewing video of the meteor, hence some parts of it may have made it to ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt burns out in the sky, way before hitting the ground, so it won\u2019t be a meteorite [which becomes so once it hits the ground],\u201d Vlahos said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this stage, we can only call it a meteor. There\u2019s a third name for them \u2013 meteoroid, for when they\u2019re travelling through space and before they enter the atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThey\u2019re not dangerous. They won\u2019t be particularly hot or cold at this stage but there\u2019s a lot of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":134600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-134599","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115005068463096066","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}