A fireball was spotted in Japan’s night sky over parts of central and western Japan, where users shared imaged all over social media of the phenomenon. 

The fireball looked like an unusual bright shooting star although local media said it was believed to be a bolide, a very bright meteor that explodes in the Earth’s atmosphere. 

"We believe the last burst of light was as bright as the full moon," Takeshi Inoue, director of the Akashi Municipal Planetarium, told Kyodo news agency.

People across wide areas of Japan were treated to a spectacular light show in the early hours of Sunday, thanks to what is believed to be a meteor. pic.twitter.com/r0HfI082SK

The fireball meteor was only visible for a few seconds in the early hours of Sunday, however, it was captured vividly by the cameras of Japanese broadcasting company NHK world. 

These cameras are used to capture earthquake activity, however, this time around it captured a very unique event. 

© UPI

One Twitter user said "The sky went bright for a moment and I felt strange because it couldn't be lightning, I felt the power of the universe!”

"Was that a fireball? I thought it was the end of the world..." said another, tweeting a video of the meteor captured while driving.

© Twitter/Sylvainreiter

Daiji Fujii, a curator at the Hiratsuka City Museum in Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo, said the meteor fell at a rate of about 15 kilometres per second and appears to have come from the asteroid belt close to Jupiter.  

The part of the meteor which did not burn up in the atmosphere may have fallen in the Pacific Ocean off of Izu Oshima, a Tokyo island off of the Izu Peninsula.  

A similar falling meteor was also observed in the skies over the Japanese skies on July 2. Meteorite fragments were found in Chiba, the prefectural city of Narashino. 

Source: Mainichi

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