The Hāwera "pyramid fireball" sighting

In April 2011 the skies over New Zealand's North Island were busy. Reports of strange lights were coming in from Taranaki, the Waikato and Rotorua. In Hāwera, a town in South Taranaki, residents had already reported a bright orange light over the southern end of town on Boxing Day 2010, and a moving "star" in January.

About a week before the main event, Pat Sutherland, secretary of the Hāwera Observatory and Astronomical Society, saw a light to the north-east of Hawera dance in the sky. It appeared to "zoom towards her." "I thought it was a planet to start with because it wasn't sparkling, but then it started moving."

Tuesday night, 12 April 2011. 8.55pm. Aaron Sellwood was standing on his driveway on Burns Street when a fireball in the sky caught his eye. "I looked at it and could see a flamey-type object with a dark shadow on top which looked to be a pyramid shape with a round top."

He rushed inside and grabbed his ex-partner and four children to come and have a look. The flaming object hovered in the sky above his neighbours' house. "It turned its flames off and it looked like it was cooling down," he said. Beneath it was what looked like an element. A big red ring.

Reporters described a flaming ball that zig-zagged through the night sky and put on a spectacular light show before speeding away. The family wondered if they were seeing things. Then, 20 minutes later, the strange object returned. All doubt was removed. Sellwood took a photograph of the light.

The story ran in the Taranaki Daily News and on Stuff within two days, alongside a string of sightings from the Waikato. Nikki Hawkey, communications manager at Airways Corporation, said nothing had been logged on Tuesday night about anything unusual in the Hawera area. No formal investigation followed.

A follow-up article asked whether a Chinese lantern was behind it. Betty Leung, President of the Taranaki Chinese Association, rejected the idea. "I don't think it has anything to do with a lantern," she said. "That thing zig-zagged." Bob McDavitt, MetService weather ambassador, agreed: "A Chinese lantern would not go up and down like shown" in the photo. He floated a hand-held device like a cellphone, or the light on a kite used for kite-fishing. But a NIWA station recorded winds under four knots over Hāwera. That "would not be good for kite flying."

Yet lanterns were in the air that week. Fonterra worker Mark Stowell, 42, saw a dull orange light travel slowly towards the Hāwera Water Tower on a Thursday night and disappear. Twenty minutes later he saw another. Through binoculars it was "a lantern with a little fire glowing inside."

In the same coverage, other lights found answers. Dr Grant Christie of Stardome Observatory called a 29 March light over Te Rapa a meteor, "one of the brightest observed fireballs above New Zealand since 1999." A Hamilton sighting was put down to the International Space Station. The Burns Street object never received a settled explanation. It survives in news archives and a short entry on Wikipedia's list of New Zealand sightings. A flame, a dark pyramid, a red ring. And a family on a driveway who watched it come back.