Australians have been treated with a rare sighting of a meteor shower, which lit up night skies in the country’s east on Monday night.
The astronomical phenomenon was part of the Lyrid meteor shower that occurs annually in April.
One of the planet’s oldest meteor showers, with sightings dating back as far as 687BCE, the burning rocks lit up the sky from Bundaberg in Queensland to central NSW, with some as far south as Melbourne catching a glimpse of the dazzling show.
At about 7:30 p.m. Monday, the usually dark skies temporarily lit up as the blazing meteor sped past Brisbane.
Several lucky residents were able to capture the incredible sight on camera, saying they heard loud bangs and saw bright flashes in the skies, leading some to think it was a thunderstorm.
“I thought it was lightning,” one witness wrote on social media.
Others described seeing a “flash of green” among the clouds, with some reporting hearing “a massive boom” near Stanthorpe, close to the Queensland-NSW border.
The meteor was spotted further south in NSW and Victoria, with some residents in Sydney and Melbourne witnessing the astronomical sight.
“We’re camping near Kyogle and it was like someone turned on a giant light switch for about two seconds,” a person wrote on social media.
“It was bright white with a green tail, and it appeared so close that I thought it had struck the roof of a house nearby,” another added.
A resident in Sandy Flat, NSW, said they felt the entire house shake when the meteor passed overhead.
“Saw the flash from lounge room window and shortly after heard a big bang, shaking the house like bad thunder,” they said.
Another person who was driving from Cooran in Queensland “thought someone has massive high beams on”.
The Lyrid meteors occur once a year, usually between April 16 and April 29, though the peak occurs on April 22 to 23 and can be seen with the naked eye.
Unlike usual meteors, which leave a long and glowing dust trail, the Lyrid meteor instead shows as a series of bright flashes, known as a fireball.
Keen stargazers who missed the radiant sight on Monday evening will have another opportunity to catch it again on Tuesday evening.
