A meteor has lit up the sky above Sydney and been seen from hundreds of kilometres away tonight.

The bright flash happened about 6.30pm and was seen by many in Sydney, Canberra and elsewhere in regional NSW.

Astrophysicist Dr Brad Tucker said the sighting had been confirmed as a meteor.

Did you see the meteor? Send your footage to [email protected].

A bright flash over Sydney. (Malik Fakhar Abbas)

“It was spotted in Canberra and into central NSW,” Dr Tucker told nine.com.au.

“The greenish colour indicates it was a meteor, usually with iron and nickel.

“The bright flash midway means it is likely fragmented or broke apart.

“It could 30 to 50 centimetres in size based on the brightness.”

Tucker, an associate professor at Australian National University, said the way a meteor was confirmed was by judging its colour and speed.

“Colours of objects indicate what it is made up of. Space junk is usually more yellow,” he said.

“Meteors are travelling much faster than say satellites or space junk as well and so they cover a larger distance and are in the sky for a shorter time.”

Channel Nine’s skycam shows a moment a bright light flashes in the sky above Sydney. (Nine)

Tucker said it wasn’t unheard of for a meteor to be seen, with “larger meteors like this maybe every month or so across Australia”. The fortunate thing about tonight’s was that it “happened at a good time”.

“Early in the evening, so lots of people were still awake and out and about,” he said.

“They can happen in the middle of the night.”

Junjie Yu was driving home eastbound on the M5 near Moorebank when he captured the bright flash on his dashcam.

Junjie Yu was driving home eastbound on the M5 near Moorebank when he captured the bright flash on his dashcam. (Junjie Yu)

“All of a sudden in this slow-moving traffic, I saw this just streak of light barging through the air in the sky and in that moment it was pretty, pretty exciting, pretty thrilled,” he said.

The 25-year-old said the first thing his mum said when she saw him was “did you get it on dashcam?” before urging him to immediately get the footage off the SD card.

“I’ve never seen one before, but yeah, it was quite impressive, and every single car in front of me sort of slowed down and brake, and that was pretty funny,” he said.

“Maybe everyone else had the same reaction.”

Dean Bailey said he was finding a parking spot at Gledswood Hills Country Club when the meteor passed over.

“Next thing I know I see what looked like a mix of an explosion and lightning light up the sky so I quickly parked and checked the dash cam and saw that I captured the incredible moment,” he told nine.com.au.

Dean Bailey said he was finding a parking spot at Gledswood Hills Country Club when the meteor passed over. (Dean Bailey)

More than half a dozen reports of sightings were made to the International Meteor Organisation and Dr Ellie Sansom, director of Curtin University’s Desert Fireball Network, encouraged more people to do so.

“We can definitely get as far as figuring out where any meteorites might have landed,” she said.

“So, from enough observations from crowdsourcing it, we can get an idea, maybe, of where the end height is and how fast it might have, or at the position of that trajectory.”

She said when the network was fully operational across about a third of Australia it would pick up about one fireball a night but it was “very rare” to see such a bright fireball over a populated area at a time when so many people are outside and able to witness it.

Sansom said the fireball definitely appeared to be caused by a “decent size” meteoroid rather than space junk or some other man-made object, due in part to its speed.

(Supplied)

“I’d say somewhere between maybe 10 centimetres and half a metre. I wouldn’t say it’s much bigger than that,” she said.

“It does have some really like nice bright flares, which are pretty good, and it lasts at least five seconds, from what I can see,

” … it really depends on the angle these actually come in, if it’s quite steep, then to survive five seconds it needs to be bigger, if it comes in shallow, it can survive the low density of the upper atmosphere for a lot longer.”

A meteoroid – or an asteroid if it’s larger than a metre – becomes a meteor when it passes into earth’s atmosphere and a meteorite if it’s large enough for chunks to land in the ocean or land.

The bright light it generates is called a fireball if it is brighter than Venus.

Another person told nine.com.au they were caught off guard by the brightness of the flash that they saw from Waterloo.

“l saw a flash of light in the sky and was so confused, I first thought it was a flare that had been lit,” she said.

“Then I noticed this glowing ball of orange falling from the sky. I’d never seen anything like it.

“The whole sky was lit up for all of 10 seconds.”