A camera at Cairns Airport in Australia witnessed a green explosion in mid-air. Experts said it was a meteor. An airport surveillance camera recorded the meteor’s flight, and eyewitnesses within a 400km radius also saw the fall and filmed it on their smartphones, video recorders, and security cameras.

The Guardian reports that the explosion sound is heard most clearly over the town of Croydon, about 100 km east of Normanton, and suggests that the meteor exploded very high in the atmosphere.

from the Australian National University, Dr. Brad Tucker tells the newspaper that the asteroid was probably about a meter wide and was moving at more than 150,000 kilometers per hour. The astrophysicist explains that the reason for the meteorite’s greenish color may be due to the overheating of the iron and nickel fragments during the gradual combustion of the stone in the atmosphere.

A stone of this size almost never reaches the Earth’s surface, but explodes in the atmosphere at high altitude. “An explosion in the air, especially in a populated area, can only scare away. But debris up to 20 meters can really cause serious damage,” says Dr Tucker.

Such meteorites occur about once a month, but mostly occur in uninhabited areas and remain undetected. “It occurred at a convenient time in a relatively densely populated area, at 9:00 pm on Saturday evening. This means that many people have witnessed such an event.”