Residents across Victoria, Australia, witnessed a spectacular celestial event on the evening of August 10, 2025, as a brilliant meteor fireball blazed across the night sky. The event, observed around 7:30 PM local time, was widely seen and captured on video, particularly in the Ballarat and Bendigo regions. The International Meteor Organisation (IMO) confirmed the sighting, describing it as an exceptionally bright and slow-moving fireball.
Adding to the spectacle, witnesses reported hearing a distinct sonic boom approximately one minute after the fireball's appearance, causing houses to rattle and leading some to initially mistake the phenomenon for seismic activity. Geoscience Australia confirmed receiving numerous reports of tremors but stated no actual seismic events occurred, attributing the vibrations to the meteor's passage or sonic boom. Experts, including David Finlay and Associate Professor Michael Brown from Monash University, suggest that fragments of the meteor likely reached the ground due to the intensity of the sonic boom. Preliminary analysis by the Ballarat Municipal Observatory indicates a potential impact site northeast of Maryborough, with a final observed height of 9 kilometers, making a meteorite fall highly probable. The event's speed upon entering the atmosphere is estimated at around 70,000 kilometers per hour. While the event coincided with the Perseid meteor shower period, experts have definitively ruled out any connection, as the radiant point for the Perseids does not align with Victoria's latitude. The search for potential meteorites is ongoing, with researchers using collected footage to triangulate possible landing locations. Historically, the Ballarat region has a record of meteorite discoveries, including a 15g iron meteorite found in the 1860s.