A mysterious explosion that some likened to sounding like a “sonic boom” left people shocked and scared after it echoed around the Banks Peninsula.

The sound coincided with strange lights streaking across the sky that were seen from as far away as Wellington.

Residents from Akaroa, Pigeon Bay, Little River, Okuti Valley and Takamatua jumped to social media in search of questions after hearing the noise shortly after 9pm on Saturday.

One resident asked “what on earth was that?” and said they saw a shooting star – but wondered whether it was a meteor.

Another said they were scared after hearing the explosion and thought it was an earthquake, while others believed it had been a “massive falling star” that had broken up and landed in the sea.

Monitoring equipment analysed by Crown science institute GNS had picked up “seismic traces moving at about the speed of sound – possibly from a sonic boom”, a spokeswoman said, but GNS had not received any reports from the public about it and could not ellaborate on what the seismic traces were.

While the sound appears to have been heard most sharply across Banks Peninsula, people from as far afield as Wellington and Timaru told Stuff described seeing bright lights – variously described as balls of yellow, green, blue and orange – streaking across the night sky before breaking up.

Anna-Marie Miller, who lives in Wellington overlooking the South Island, said she saw “what looked like a bright greenish bluish shooting star that fizzled out as it came down, while Stef Bell, who also lives in the capital, said she and her husband saw a “distinctively large, fast green streak across the sky” from her south-facing property.

Robyn Redhill, from Khandallah in Wellington, said the light appeared as a fuzzy, whitish yellow ball dropping straight down.

“It moved so fast I couldn’t believe its speed. It was large in that if a shooting star is a pin head this was a tennis ball.”

Another person from Lincoln, south of Christchurch, described seeing a “bright white ball of light about half the size of the moon travelling from north to south”.

“(It) broke up as I watched it into three or four smaller globes which looked to burn up in atmosphere. About 90 seconds later a noticeable boom could be heard.”

Nearer to what appears to be the epicentre of people experiencing the strange phenomenon, Ruby Pook was camping in Okains Bay with a friend when she saw four shooting stars in a row, followed by the sound a few minutes later.

An Okuti Valley resident, who asked not to be named, told Stuff they heard “a huge boom like an explosion”, but did not see anything.

The resident, who has been living in the area for 18 years, said they had never heard anything like it before and it had initially left them “concerned”.

They said another resident had mentioned to them they had seen a “bright green light” which “fizzled out” followed by a “massive boom” a short time later.

One person in Little River reported the incident to Fire and Emergency New Zealand at about 9.30pm, saying they and their neighbours had heard an explosion, but crews were not sent to investigate.

Both Police and the NZ Defence Force said they did not receive any reports relating to the possible explosion.