Forty kilometres a second: Fireball lights up the sky over Brisbane (2025)

It lit up the night sky across south-east Queensland and northern NSW overnight, yet the meteor that caused Monday night’s fireball was probably just the size of your fist.

The sky lit up about 7.30pm, as the meteor tore through the atmosphere at an estimated 40 kilometres a second.

University of Southern Queensland astronomer Professor Jonti Horner said while the fireball coincided with the Lyrid meteor shower, it definitely was not part of the annual cosmic occurrence.

How could Horner be so sure? Simply because Australia was facing in the wrong direction to experience the Lyrid shower at the time.

“The dust from those two meteor showers [Lyrid and Halley’s Comet-associated Eta Aquariids] was hitting the other side of the planet and wouldn’t have been able to reach us,” he said.

Meteor hunters shared dashcam and security camera footage to social media, appearing to show a meteor visible from as far north as Calliope, near Gladstone, and as far south as Sydney.

Some deduced it would have fallen to earth near Emmaville – south of the southern Queensland town of Stanthorpe and north of Tenterfield in NSW.

One person posted that Emmaville was “abuzz” on Tuesday with people looking for fragments.

But given the meteor’s speed, Horner said it was unlikely any had made it to the ground.

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“My instinct is that this wasn’t quite big enough to drop substantial fragments,” he said.

“I know some people are talking about where they’d go look for things if any debris made it to the ground, but I think it’s unlikely.

“It doesn’t take away from the fact that it was a really spectacular sight, and that was exacerbated by the fact that the time it happened … is when a lot of people were out and about.”

Horner said it was likely the fireball exploded at 30 or 40 kilometres high, which meant that any loud noises that were caused by the meteor would be heard at least two minutes after the flash appeared.

“For a long time, scientists would say meteors don’t make sound – which Chelyabinsk proves is absolutely not the case,” he said.

“Fireballs like this can make sound, but that sound, if you are to hear it, comes a long time after the fireball itself.”

As for its spectacular green hue, Horner said it was an “urban myth” a meteor’s elemental make-up could be determined by the colour of its fireball.

“The light you get from a meteor or fireball like this is mainly due to the atmosphere that it’s moving through,” he said.

“They essentially push the atmosphere ahead of them, creating a shock wave, and that air is incredibly superheated and becomes ionised.

“That superheated air then ablates the surface of the meteoroid, turning it from solid to gas, basically baking it away.”

Horner said while Lyrid would not be great for Australian stargazers, the Eta Aquariids shower would reach its peak around May 6 and provide a “pretty decent” pre-dawn show.

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