A meteor that flashed across the dark Tauranga sky over the weekend was captured on security camera.
Andrew Savage was working as an overnight security guard at the Bayfair Shopping Centre when he saw a flash from the corner of his eye while reviewing CCTV footage on Sunday morning.
And when he watched it again, he saw it was a meteor.
"I just happened to catch it," he said. "Right time, right place, I think."
It was his first time ever seeing a meteor.
"It was buzzy."
Savage posted the footage, which was taken at 2.41am, on the Facebook group, 'BOP & WAIKATO Weather & Natural Events' on Sunday.
"I just posted it on our local Bay of Plenty weather event thing, you know, because it's from the sky and all, then yeah, it just got a lot of interest," he said.
"I thought, I found it interesting, so why not share it with other people?"
He said it appeared to have fallen near Farm Street, behind Bayfair Shopping Centre, in Mount Maunganui.
However, Tauranga Astronomical Society president David Grieg said it had exploded in the atmosphere before then.
"It was a little bit hard to see in the footage, but from what we could tell, it was heading out to sea to the north east direction. So if it had fallen, it would've ended up in the ocean anyway," he said.
Grieg said it looked like a brighter than normal meteor, which was less common.
He said there were thousands of meteors entering the atmosphere over New Zealand every month.
More than 10,000 meteors were detected over New Zealand during the month of March by the Fireballs Aotearoa network of meteor cameras.
But Grieg said the actual number would be more than double that, as meteors could only be detected at night with clear skies.
"Most of the time, when these have occurred, we're fast asleep or not outside looking up at the sky," he said.
"They do occur reasonably regularly, and with the increasing number of cameras that we're installing, we are detecting them more often."
