Earth News from TerraDaily.com
Fireball lights up Japanese skies
Tokyo, Aug 20 (AFP) Aug 20, 2025

A flashing fireball dashed across the skies of western Japan, shocking residents and dazzling stargazers, though experts said it was a natural phenomenon and not an alien invasion.


Videos and photos emerged online of the extremely bright ball of light visible for hundreds of kilometres shortly after 11:00 pm (1400 GMT) local time on Tuesday.


"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," Yoshihiko Hamahata, who was driving in Miyazaki Prefecture, told NHK.


"It seemed like daylight. For a moment, I didn't know what had happened and was very surprised," he told the public broadcaster.


Toshihisa Maeda, head of Sendai Space Museum in the Kagoshima region in southwestern Japan, said that it was a fireball, an exceptionally bright meteor.


It seemed to have gone into the Pacific, he added.


"People reported feeling the air vibrate," he told AFP. "It was as bright as the Moon."


Objects causing fireball events can exceed one metre (three feet) in size, according to NASA.


Fireballs that explode in the atmosphere are technically referred to as bolides, although the terms fireballs and bolides are often used interchangeably.





Space News from SpaceDaily.com
Maven stays silent after routine pass behind Mars
ICE-CSIC leads a pioneering study on the feasibility of asteroid mining
NASA JPL Unveils Rover Operations Center for Moon, Mars Missions

24/7 Energy News Coverage
Thorium plated steel points to smaller nuclear clocks
Solar ghost particles seen flipping carbon atoms in underground detector
Overview Energy debuts airborne power beaming milestone for space based solar power

Military Space News, Nuclear Weapons, Missile Defense
Autonomous DARPA project to expand satellite surveillance network by BAE Systems
IAEA calls for repair work on Chernobyl sarcophagus
Momentus joins US Space Force SHIELD contract vehicle

24/7 News Coverage
UAlbany Atmospheric Scientist Proposes Innovative Method to Reduce Aviation's Climate Impact
Digital twin successfully launched and deployed into space
Robots that spare warehouse workers the heavy lifting


ADVERTISEMENT



All rights reserved. Copyright Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.