A meteor shower in the Northern Territory outback has been captured on camera over the towns of Alice Springs and Tennant Creek.
NT Police Duty Superintendent James O'Brien said officers received a phone call after midnight on Monday from a Charles Creek Camp resident about a "magnificent, brilliant white light that had lit up Alice Springs like daylight".
Police CCTV vision recorded the meteor shower travelling across the sky in both Alice Springs and more than 500 kilometres north in Tennant Creek.
There were also reports of noise like thunder, rumbling and windows shaking.
Many pieces of rock - about 200 tonnes - from space hit Earth every day but most were too small to be noticed, Australian National University astrophysicist Brad Tucker said.
The ones that are noticed such as Monday morning's event were also small, but in this case large enough to be seen burning brightly and colourfully before disappearing into the outback.
"It's because they are very dense and they're travelling hundreds of thousands of kilometres an hour so you get a lot of friction therefore a lot of brightness and a big boom," Dr Tucker told ABC radio.
