"A stroke of luck": Perfect shot of meteor off the Tasmanian coast captured

"A stroke of luck": Perfect shot of meteor off the Tasmanian coast captured

Friction is what gives meteors their spectacular appearance.

A camera onboard a research vessel captured the moment a meteor broke up in the sky over the ocean off Tasmania's southern coast. The crew aboard the vessel witnessed a bright flash of light which descended from space before it vanished. The ship is currently mapping the ocean floor 100km south of Tasmania, near the Huon Marine Park.

"A stroke of luck": Perfect shot of meteor off the Tasmanian coast captured
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The bright flash of light, which appeared green to the naked eye but was captured on video in black and white, descended from space and disintegrated before their eyes.

Voyage manager John Hooper said capturing the moment was just "a stroke of luck".

"When a meteor enters the Earth's atmosphere at high-speed, it is the friction of rock with the atmosphere that makes them burn, as their kinetic energy is converted to other forms like heat, light and sound. Many meteors were once asteroids, travelling through space on their own trajectory, but this changes as they pass close to Earth, where they can be affected by its gravitational pull," Glen Nagle from CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science said.

"As they enter our atmosphere, they become meteors and their entry can be visually spectacular."

The RV Investigator crew were undertaking routine seafloor mapping and trialling marine equipment when the extraordinary sight occurred — a sight they don't think anyone else has managed to get on-camera.

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