Fireball sighting sparks meteorite hunt in Hawke’s Bay

• A fireball spotted falling over the North Island on Wednesday has sparked interest among meteorite hunters.
• Fireballs Aotearoa executive member Steve Wyn-Harris believes a meteorite could have landed in Hawke’s Bay as a result.
• Wyn-Harris is urging locals to share security footage to help locate the space rock.

The hunt is on in Hawke’s Bay for New Zealand’s 11th meteorite after a fireball was filmed streaking across the night sky.

And one meteorite-hunter believes someone’s security camera holds the key to finding it.

A post on the Fireballs Aotearoa Facebook page said team member David Greig captured the fireball on one of his Tapo security cameras looking south from rural Ōpōtiki at 1.49pm on Wednesday.

“The sky and the foreground looks very bright (like daytime) due to the bright moonlight and the very sensitive camera,” the post said.

“If the sky had been dark, the fireball would have looked even brighter.”

A fireball is a bright meteor that could result in a meteorite falling to the ground.

A meteor is a streak in the sky caused by a meteoroid entering Earth’s atmosphere, usually at more than 70,000km/h. Meteors are sometimes colloquially called shooting stars.

Fireball Aotearoa executive member Steve Wyn-Harris was part of the team that found New Zealand’s 10th meteorite in the Mackenzie District in 2024, now he’s after the 11th.

The 10th meteorite to be found by the Fireballs Aotearoa team, weighing 815g, about the size of a man's fist. Photo / Steve Wyn-Harris

“On average about two or three of these things hit New Zealand every year, but mostly we don’t know about it or see it,” he said.

“But we now have the technology with these cameras to track them.”

The group hosts 150 meteor cameras across New Zealand with that objective.

Wyn-Harris believes Wednesday’s fireball may have caused a meteorite to land somewhere in Hawke’s Bay. region.

“Three cameras we host in Napier, Raukawa, and Waipukurau were under cloud [at the time] so didn’t capture the event,” he said.

Wyn-Harris says Fireballs Aotearoa had received two eyewitness accounts of the fireball from Hawke’s Bay, so he was convinced someone out there had security footage that could aid his search.

“What would be very helpful to narrow down a potential search area for New Zealand’s 11th meteorite would be if anyone’s security cameras at 10.49 to 10.50pm, March 12, captured the event through a break in the clouds,” he said.

“If you have sound on camera you may have even caught the sonic boom, which we’d be very keen to hear about.”

• Wyn-Harris is asking for any footage or sights of the fireball to be reported to the Fireballs Aotearoa Facebook page or sent to meteorites@rasnz.org.nz.