Invercargill man Tim Maynard captured a photo of a meteor flying over Invercargill on Monday.


An Invercargill man accidentally snapped a picture of a bright flash of light in the night sky on Monday.

Tim Maynard was taking photos on Stead St, near the airport, when he captured a picture of a meteor. He was unaware of the light trail until he looked back over the stills.

The picture was taken using a ten-second exposure, he said.

Southland Astronomical Society president Phil Burt said meteors were common, particularly at this time of year.

"There's a meteor shower that recurs regularly at this time of year. The activity increases for some nights so you are bound to see several," he said.

when i wave my "violet wand", there are no fireballs...

If that was NZ, it must've been Smaug...

that was the coolest dragon ever...

Can't comment never been to the south Island

I have been told it's beautiful down there.

I hope I'm reading your comment right lol

That *was* pretty cool - I'd just found a good deal on a fairly-big TV when that came out, so I'd largely stopped going to the theater to see movies. But I went to see that one in 3D, & I remember thinking "Oh man, THIS just blows my TV out of the water!!"

all those movies were great visually on blue ray...

And the Hobbit trilogy looks fantastic on 3D Blu Ray.

i never got into the 3D experience... last 3D i saw was the transformers movie a few years ago...

I like it. And I love that some of the old 3D movies are being updated for today's technology. I bought the late 60s scifi flick The Bubble, characters find themselves trapped inside a town surrounded by a bubble (long before Under The Dome and The Simpsons Movie). The 3D looks amazing, better than any of the new movies, originally when I wanted to show off the 3D to people I would put in Avatar (came free with my Blu Ray player), but now I show them this.

to me, it's not the 3D effects, it's the cheesy way they present them, in a weird slow motion type action... the worst i can think of was Resident Evil: Afterlife, the slow motion 3D effects were just horrible...

Because I live in such a rural place, I often see meteors that look like a florescent-tube in either white or green. Not too unlike this picture.

On one occasion I did see a real fire-ball and I stood silent for several minutes waiting for a sonic-boom or a shock-wave, but it didn't reach me.

It looked like a dark center with a reddish orange halo with a dull slipstream behind it and lasted several seconds.