Not so rare meteor streaks Sydney skyline

“Normally, if you get a meteor that’s coming and it starts to break up near the surface and fragment, people hear a sonic boom,” he said.

“So the fact that we didn’t hear that, but people did clearly see the fragmentation, probably means that it broke up higher in the sky — about 80 or so kilometres high.”

And it could have landed anywhere, Dr Tucker said. But going off videos seen on social media, it most likely ended up in the ocean. But that doesn’t mean reported sightings aren’t useful.

“There’s a lot of work that we’re trying to do now, which is why it’s quite helpful to have reports,” he said, “because if you can recover the meteorite, a) it’s interesting; it’s cool.

“But also, if you actually have enough video, you can not only figure out where it landed, but also where it came from. But I don’t think we’ll recover this one.”

“There are projects like Fireballs in the Sky, and they even have an app, where you can upload your videos,” he said. “And essentially, it uses all of those reports to try and triangulate the meteorite.”