Meteors appear to be raining down on New Zealand, but why are some of them bright green?
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