Watch: Bright Meteor Caught On Video Streaking Across Sydney Night Sky

A bright meteor was spotted lighting up the night sky above Sydney, Australia, on Saturday night. But while it is a stunning sight, experts said it is not really a rarity.

Over the weekend, multiple reports were made on a meteor that's about a meter in size, with witnesses saying they saw it fragmenting in the sky. Some residents in Sydney took to social media to describe the phenomenon, which occurred around 80 kilometers (50 miles) above the ground.

The dashboard camera of one resident named Jamie Kosovich managed to capture the meteor. The eyewitness shared the video Saturday on the Facebook group Australian Meteor Reports. The minute-long video showed the meteor glowing brightly as it moved toward the left of the frame, making it easy to spot amid other sources of light.

"Captured this on my dash cam tonight driving on the northern rd from Camden towards Penrith in Sydney at about 8:30 16/1/21. Sorry for the commentary I was in shook. It was amazing," the eyewitness wrote.

Brad Tucker, an astrophysicist at the Australian National University, has noted that this happens quite regularly. He told the Sydney Morning Herald that meteors streak across the sky every three to six months. The only difference this time is that the meteor made its appearance early enough that it was spotted and caught on camera.

“You get something like this — because this was something like half a meter, to a meter in size — every three-to-six months,” Tucker said. “But it happened at around 9:30 pm, when everyone’s out and about on a Saturday night, instead of at 1 am, when everyone’s asleep.”

Although the meteor isn't really considered a rarity by experts, what makes it interesting is that it was not accompanied by a sonic boom.

"Normally, if you get a meteor that’s coming and it starts to break up near the surface and fragment, people hear a sonic boom,” the astrophysicist noted.

“So the fact that we didn’t hear that, but people did clearly see the fragmentation, probably means that it broke up higher in the sky — about 80 or so kilometers high,” he continued.

Tucker also explained how witness reports are helpful in gathering more information about meteors. Videos allow researchers to figure out where a certain meteor landed as well as where it came from. He explained, however, that they might not be able to recover enough details to find out where the said meteor landed.

“There are projects like Fireballs in the Sky, and they even have an app, where you can upload your videos,” he said. “And essentially, it uses all of those reports to try and triangulate the meteorite.”