Were you out in the dark on Tuesday night 23 May? Perhaps you were one of the lucky star gazers got the chance to see a rare piece of space debris light up the sky as it flew past Earth.

So far no footage or photos have emerged that captured the meteoroid, however locals and enthusiasts alike were adamant it put on just as good a show as the fireworks that had just finished at the Coonamble Show.

"It had quite a decent green glow and a really nice tail," said Coonamble local, Stuart Lloyd who happened to spot the spectacle at just the right moment.

"And it was relatively slow compared to other ones I've seen too."

"You'd usually see something like this around December during the Geminids shower."

The Geminids are an annual meteor shower typically visible in mid-December, with the coming 2023 shower estimated to occur on the night of 14 December leading into 15 December.

The meteoroid was visible from Coonamble towards the north-north-east at around 8:30pm.

Coonabarabran-based astronomist, Donna "the astronomer" Burton was out sky gazing on Tuesday night with a group of twenty when the meteor flew past.

"Most meteoroids don’t last long, they just flash across the sky," said Donna.

"But this one shot through for a long time, so it gave us all a chance to go 'wow take a look at that' to the group."

According to Donna, the meteor was around the size of a human head.

"From what we could see it was a reasonably sized one," said Donna.

"It's not like the showers you can see out here later in the year, but it was still quite spectacular."

Meteoroids are generally made up of broken-up asteroids that make their way into Earth's atmosphere, slowly disintegrating until they either make contact with the Earth or dissolve.

"The way it looked it would've been a piece of space junk, a piece of metal or something that could've broken off an old satellite," said Donna.

"There's more and more space junk."

According to NASA, there are 27,000 trackable pieces of large space junk floating around Earth, however, there is an unknown amount of smaller debris.

This can pose an issue for space travel, but also provide a good light show for us down on Earth if we're lucky enough to be looking up at the right times.

If you saw the meteoroid or snapped a photo Contact Us.