Incredibly lucky moment caught on camera in broad daylight: ‘Very fast’

Although meteors fall at the same frequency during day and night, they’ve got to be incredibly bright to be seen when the sun is shining.

The one witnessed by this reporter in the Victorian coastal town of Inverloch on Sunday afternoon was no exception. Its blinding white head, followed by a yellow tail, appeared in the sky for two spectacular seconds, and then disappeared behind bushland.

Although the meteor appeared close by, it was likely 80km above the Earth, meaning it could be seen in multiple towns over much of the sprawling Gippsland region and even in outer Melbourne. Reports suggest it may have hit the ocean or the ground near the holiday town of Lakes Entrance, over 200km northeast from Inverloch. Associate Professor Michael Brown, an astronomer at Monash University, explained it’s hard for witnesses to determine how close meteors are.

“They don’t realise how fast it’s moving and how far away it might be. And they don’t have a sense of scale,” he told Yahoo News.

Related: Scientists scour fields for ‘extremely valuable’ 3kg item seen briefly on CCTV

Felt like house had been hit by car

Bairnsdale local Amy Taylor was much closer to the meteor, and was relaxing on the verandah having a Sunday afternoon drink when it flew by. While she didn’t see it in person, like a lot of other people in her town and neighbouring Paynesville, she heard and felt it.

“It felt like a car hit a house at first. I jumped,” she said, adding the noise was so loud she “felt it through the ground”.

Wondering what had just occurred, Amy looked over her CCTV footage frame by frame, and could see what appeared to be a black rock falling towards the ocean.

Multiple reports of meteor above Victoria

Reports suggest the meteor flashed across the sky between 4.40 and 4.41pm, with sightings from as far west as Dromana, and as far north as Beechworth.

Residents from around the state claimed to have captured it on camera, soon after the event. One incredible CCTV clip was shared by 3AW host Jacqueline Felgate, as it streaked above a Slip-and-Slide set up on a Gippsland lawn. A dashcam video from Springvale, in Melbourne’s southeast, shows what appears to be the same meteor flying above homes.

“Whoa, a meteor,” a man inside the vehicle can be heard saying. “What?” his partner responds. “A meteor in the daylight,” he exclaims.

What created the loud sound?

Experts have described anyone who saw yesterday’s occurrence as incredibly lucky. As an astronomer, Brown has dedicated his life to watching the skies, but he’s only ever seen a meteor during the day once, and that was in Arizona around 20 years ago.

After the sighting was noted by many people on the Australian Meteor Reports social media page, there were some incorrect reports that it had sparked a bushfire. Brown explained there’s a common misconception that they’re hot when they hit the Earth.

“It’s been out in space, which is generally pretty cold. The surface melts when it’s coming in… but generally they’re cool when they hit the ground,” he said.

The sound that many people reported hearing was a sonic boom, created by the meteor’s speed.

“When meteors hit the upper atmosphere, they’re moving at a speed of at least 11km a second, but often quite a lot faster, more like 20 or 30 kilometres a second. So they’re travelling well beyond supersonic speed, and they take a while to slow down to subsonic speed,” Brown said.

“They’re coming in very fast, and that’s producing the sonic boom everyone heard over Gippsland.”

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