Incredibly Bright New Zealand Fireball Caught on Dash Cam.

[Suzy]

Caught in action by dash cam- a very bright fireball over Tauranga, New Zealand just recently. Apparently several sonic booms were heard. Fellow IceInSpace-er Grahame Kelaher posted this on facebook which is how I got a hold of it. Wow, so cool, I kept playing this over and over again.

Here's the video from Josh Sherborne:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRs6JS52VNw&feature=youtu.be

I for one, can't get enough of fireballs :D.

[Regulus]

Thanks for the FB share on this Suzy, but I do wish it hade been cloud free so more of the action could have been seen :-)

Trev

[multiweb]

That's so cool. Bit like the Siberian ball. Only smaller. :thumbsup:

[PeterM]

Thanks Suzy, yet another great capture of a night sky event. Makes me wonder with the ever growing millions of mobile, security, allsky and now dash cams capturing everything and anything where are all the UFOs... seems they are a very shy bunch. Anyways I have a dash cam now just case...

[Suzy]

Marc, yes that's what I thought too!
They say events like the Chelyabinsk one happen about every 100 years so I guess we have a long time to wait for another one like it.

Peter, congrats on your dash cam :thumbsup:. Every astro person should have one :D. Another expense for this hobby :rolleyes:.
I've seen an amazing pic of a lightning bolt strike next to a car with one of these in them. The whole screen was blinding white :eyepop:.
Neil deGrasse Tyson once said that the easiest way to get the best evidence was to nick something off their operating table and pop it in your pocket and it'll be easy to tell the difference in materials used that we use. Makes sense :lol: :ship1:

Trev, I didn't realise Tassie may be able to have seen it too. Oh, you may have been lucky then :sadeyes:. Those clouds really are pestering you guys there for a long time.

[gaa_ian]

Interesting to read the eyewitness reports (http://www.weatherwatch.co.nz/content/meteor-over-northern-nz) !
Shows how peoples perceptions vary & you have to wonder what some of them were on !

[Regulus]

I tell you from experience that a close lightning strike is an overwhelming event.
Sitting out on my porch enjoying a rare electrical storm here in Tassie's NW Coast when a bolt struck the beach about 50-100 yards away. Exactly in the direction I was looking too.
The loudest sound I have ever heard, and the brightness left me blind for a while. Took and hour I reckon for my vision to return to normal.

[Ian Cooper]

After some extensive detective work I was able to track down the piece of road that Josh Sherborne of Tauranga was on when his dashcam recorded the bollide. Google maps & the satelitte maps on the Tauranga City Counci Site are years behind which didn't help, but thanks to one of the Roading staff there I narrowed it down to the Domain/Tara Rd intersection with SH 2. The map here is from the N.Z.T.A. site. I have plotted the path of Josh's car. In looking at his footage I have assumed a 160 degree field of view from his dashcam. I worked out by ratio the approx p.a. (position angle) of the Bollide explosion compared to the heading that his car was on which is shown in the first image. Having done that I plotted that 335 degree line onto a map showing the top half of the North Island as well as re-plotting the observation by Elton McAleer at Muriwai and revisited the observation on the WeatherWatch site by an unknown person at Ngahinapouri in the Waikato. The intersection of those observations brings the explosion point back towards the coast of the North Island from my preliminary estimates. Thanks to Elton's very useful observation we now have a better fix on where the object was when it exploded.

[Suzy]

Ian that's a brilliant link, thank you!

Trev, I'm glad you're okay, that was just too close...... :violin:

[Suzy]

Hi Ian, the work you've done is just beyond incredible. I'm in total awe. :prey2: