Video of a fireball streaking across the Bay of Plenty night sky has surfaced online.

A post on Fireballs Aotearoa Facebook page said that team member David Greig captured the fireball on one of his Tapo security cameras (Tapo C325WB) from rural Ōpōtiki at 10.49pm on Wednesday.

“The sky and the foreground looks very bright (like daytime) due to the bright moonlight and the very sensitive camera,” reads the post on Facebook.

“If the sky had been dark, the fireball would have looked even brighter.”

A fireball is a bright meteor that could result in a meteorite falling to the ground.

A meteor is a streak in the sky caused by a meteoroid entering Earth’s atmosphere, usually at more than 70,000km/h. Meteors are sometimes colloquially called shooting stars.

Speaking to SunLive today, Greig said meteors are very common with their cameras recording several thousand events over New Zealand every month, however very bright fireball meteors are less common. 

“Our growing network of Meteor Cameras throughout New Zealand is helping to give us a better idea of the frequency of such events. 

“There are now 154 cameras on our network throughout New Zealand and we are always looking for people to host new cameras.

Greig said there were 10,785 meteors detected over New Zealand for the month of February 2025.

Fireballs Aotearoa Meteor Map February 2025. Image / David Greig

“It is interesting to note that our cameras can only detect these meteors during the darkness of night, and only when the sky is clear (or partially clear). 

“I would estimate that the true number per month is approximately triple the count shown.”

He said the vast majority of these meteors burn up in the upper atmosphere (between 70 - 100 km up). 

" The very few meteors that do make it to the ground are then called “meteorites”.  Our aim is to try to recover these meteorites."

You can read more about the Fireballs Aotearoa network of cameras here: https://fireballs.nz/science/

“Please also check out the other tabs including the “Get Involved” and “About” tab."

Greig said there is a very interesting story on the landing page about our first recovered meteorite (almost one year to the day) on March 13, 2024.    

Did you see this fireball meteor last night?

If you did, Greig asks people to consider submitting a report here.