Melbourne Meteor Spotted on July 10, 2014

Tonight, we, as in my sister, three cousins and I, decided to go play a round or two of billiards at our local fun centre. It is a thing we normally partake in in the duration of the holidays, and it is now so common to us that it has lost its touch of excitement.

But tonight was a spectacular night, reason not being the fact that we bought pizza after our return to our cousins' home. It was rather something that we spontaneously spotted whilst driving to get pizza. Looking ahead, listening to the strange tunes of Die Antwoord, my older cousin took me by surprise when she exclaimed, "shooting star! Meteor! What is that?! Look!" Immediately we all turned our heads to see this blazing bright white object with a flare-looking trail lit up behind it, shooting down into the valley we were passing by. 

It tail slightly curved, it fell down for about fifteen to twenty seconds. Just before it disappeared from our sight, it split into two and then had a green glow to it. We spent the next hour both mesmerised by the sight, and frightened from it. Mesmerised because neither of us had witnessed a meteor falling, and frightened because we suspected it either to be a plane falling because of the closeness of the airport, or an alien's spaceship. Yes, for a number of minutes we thought that intelligent life was going to come from the space and interrogate us on our intelligence. Though, I must admit, they might not have found what they were looking for. Naturally, we spent all time after that playing the 'what-if' game and applying it to an alien invasion scenario.

I am glad to have not missed the sight of this meteor, though. For once, something out-of-this-world, literally, happens in my city and I do not miss it. Earthquakes have happened and I have not felt them, giant balls of hail have fallen and I have not seen them, but now I can proudly say that I witnessed this meteor/UFO/space junk/plane falling. What made the night better was that we hung around the last area that we spotted it and ate vegetarian pizza as we hypothesised between what we just saw and what we thought we saw.

If you missed it, imagine the photograph above, which I took on my iPhone, with an elongated tail that was cloudy and red towards the meteor, and imagine the meteor being bright white - the brightness of if was what led us to believe that it could have been a plane falling because it resembled the same brightness of plane headlights. The tail was far longer, but this picture is obviously pixelated. As horribly unprofessional as this photo is and the video at the beginning of this post is, I am glad I was able to witness this occurrence. The photo and video below are more accurate, taken by someone else:

source

Space is interesting. This just goes to show that leaving the warmth of your house in the coldness of a winter night can prove beneficial, not only through the acquiring of a fresh warm pizza, but also because of the random sighting of a meteor.