The explosion left behind a large cloud of smoke QUICKTIME Hear the meteor go BOOM 1.4MB / 8 sec. / 240x180 QuickTime movie Please enable Javascript

July 8, 1999
Web posted at: 1:37 p.m. EDT (1737 GMT)

(CNN) -- New Zealand residents were still talking Thursday about the exploding meteor that cast an eerie blue light, generated a sonic boom, and showered the Earth with fragments from space.

The meteor exploded Wednesday afternoon over a remote part of New Zealand's North Island. Thousands of eye witnesses tracked the meteor, some catching it on videotape.

"It was just a huge explosion, you know what I mean, it was massive," an eyewitness said. "And at the end it was just like a bomb gone off and just underneath the explosion there was this falling object like in a leaf fashion falling down with smoke coming from it."

Officials at a local observatory said the meteor was likely the size of a car.

Police say they received hundreds of calls from people who saw the meteor streaking across the sky and then exploding with a bright flash.

They also received reports from across the region of objects falling to the ground. There were no reports of injuries.

Seismologist Terry Webb said that instruments around Mount Ruapehu in the middle of the North Island picked up the boom, a rare occurrence.

"The seismographs were able to feel it yesterday on part of the volcano monitoring network," he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.