Fireball lights up night skies across Southern Japan - VIDEO
Residents across southern Japan were treated to a rare celestial display on Tuesday night (Aug 19) when a bright fireball streaked across the skies of Kyushu and Shikoku.
The phenomenon, first seen shortly after 11 p.m., was identified by experts as a particularly luminous meteor or shooting star, according to Japanese broadcaster NHK. Social media was flooded with videos capturing the glowing ball descending through the night sky, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.
“A white light I had never seen before came down from above, and it became so bright that I could clearly see the shapes of the houses around us,” said Yoshihiko Hamahata, who witnessed the event while driving in Miyazaki Prefecture. “It seemed like daylight for a moment—I didn’t know what had happened and was very surprised.”
Toshihisa Maeda, director of the Sendai Space Museum, explained that the fireball likely consisted of dust particles or asteroid fragments burning up as they entered Earth’s atmosphere. “It was as bright as the Moon, and people reported feeling the air vibrate. It may have fallen into the ocean as a meteorite,” Maeda told AFP.
While meteors are common—over 500,000 fireballs occur each year—most land over oceans or uninhabited areas, making sightings over populated regions a rare spectacle. Large fireballs, such as the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor in Russia, can cause injuries and damage. NASA notes that objects causing these events can exceed one meter in size.
Technically, fireballs that explode in the atmosphere are called bolides, though the terms are often used interchangeably.
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