EXCLUSIVE: Two meteors passed behind the Sydney skyline on 4 August 2018
This page is now obsolete as the second “meteor” turned out to be a helicopter
The story:
At about 6.32pm on a Saturday evening thousands of people on the south-eastern seaboard of Australia witnessed a spectacular slow-moving meteor pass across the sky. The action was captured by hundreds of dashcams and phones and received wide media coverage.
The Webcam Sydney camera captured this action also. The meteor travelled across the full width of the camera view, above and behind Sydney CBD.
In fact there were two meteors! The public seems to have seen only one, but the webcam picked up another one, a minute earlier, which crossed only about one-quarter of the camera picture.
The first meteor’s passage lasted only 4 seconds whereas the next one lasted 34 seconds. From the camera they appeared to be on a similar trajectory, but the first meteor was higher in the sky than the second.
So Webcam Sydney might have the only record of these two meteors!
Channel 7 Sydney News was running at the time and the first meteor was clearly seen above the right shoulder of the newsreader against a background of the Opera House and city skyline. He would have been unaware of the phenomenon occurring behind him. Channel 7 had moved on to another segment by the time the second meteor passed over. Channel 9 Sydney News might also have captured the passing of the meteor as they too have the city skyline as the background to their newsreader.
Trivia: At one point the second meteor seems to push a light in the sky forward and out of its way. Examination of the better quality and longer video confirms that the light in the sky was in fact an aircraft on approach to landing at Sydney Airport. The meteor certainly didn’t strike the aircraft, though it does look like it did.
The meteor was a long way to the south of Sydney.
The meteor’s appearance led to plenty of articles on the web and videos and tweets on social media.