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New Zealand may appear to be under a meteor strike right now. After a large meteor exploded over the ocean near Wellington on July 7, creating a sonic boom that could be heard at the bottom of the South Island, a smaller fireball was captured two weeks later over Canterbury. Fireballs Aotearoa, a collaboration between astronomers and citizen scientists aiming to recover a recently fallen meteorite, has received a lot of questions about this event. One of the most frequent is about the color bright green, and is it the same green that the aurora produces. Aurora australis observed from the international space station. Wikimedia Commons CC BY-ND Green fireballs have been reported and filmed in New Zealand regularly. Bright meteors often signal the arrival of an asteroid boulder, which can be between a few centimeters and a meter in diameter when it hits the atmosphere. Some of these asteroids contain nickel and iron and hit the atmosphere at spe

Looking for something spectacular to brighten up a cold, dark winter night? Well, this weekend might just have something in store: not one, not two, but three meteor showers active at the same time—combining to provide a celestial fireworks display for most of the night. While the best nights to watch are Saturday evening, July 30, until dawn on Sunday morning, all three rains will be nearing their peak levels starting tonight. So you’ll have plenty of opportunities to catch the show while avoiding bad weather or other commitments. Best of all, there will be a new moon, which means there won’t be a lot of glare ruining the show. What is a meteor shower? The solar system is full of debris left behind from the formation of the planets more than 4.5 billion years ago. Some of this debris – comets and asteroids – move in orbits that cross Earth’s path around the sun. Every time those comets and asteroids swing toward the sun, they release debris. For hundreds or thousands of years, thei