A suspected meteor lit up the Sydney skyline on Thursday night, flashing almost like it was exploding in a fireball at about 6.30pm before burning out over the city. Dashcam footage from several cars showed the object hurtling through the air and then bursting into a sudden orange explosion.

The sight was seen far beyond Sydney. Witnesses posting on social media said the meteorite was visible from the South Coast, Dubbo and Bathurst, among other areas, while Brad Tucker said he saw it from Canberra. Tucker estimated the object was 30 to 50 centimetres in size and called it “a good-sized one,” saying, “may not seem big, but they are super dense so [it] put on quite the show”.

By 8pm on Thursday, the suspected meteorite had not been officially confirmed, and it was still unclear where it landed or how fast it was moving. The Desert Fireball Network was working to determine the nature of the object and, in Tucker’s words, “We are trying to extend a network … out to the east coast to … track them.”

The episode stood out because objects that large do not light up the sky every day. Tucker estimated that something like the one seen on Thursday flies over Australia every few weeks, while most shooting stars are tiny specks of dust about the size of a grain of sand. He also said about 200 tonnes of space rocks hit Earth every day, and suggested the green colour visible in dashcam footage points to a rock made of iron and nickel.

Meteors are rocks from space that enter Earth’s atmosphere at high speed and burn up. If one survives that trip and reaches the ground, it becomes a meteorite. The question now is not whether Sydney saw a show, but whether this one survived the descent and left anything behind for scientists to find.