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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
“It seemed like daylight. For a moment, I didn’t know what had happened and was very surprised,” he told the public broadcaster.<\/p>\n
Toshihisa Maeda, head of Sendai Space Museum in the Kagoshima region in southwestern Japan, said that it was a fireball, an exceptionally bright meteor.<\/p>\n
It seemed to have gone into the Pacific, he added.<\/p>\n
“People reported feeling the air vibrate,” he told AFP. “It was as bright as the Moon.”<\/p>\n
Objects causing fireball events can exceed one metre (three feet) in size, according to NASA.<\/p>\n
Fireballs that explode in the atmosphere are technically referred to as bolides, although the terms fireballs and bolides are often used interchangeably.<\/p>\n
hih\/stu\/cwl<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6978,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"","format":"video","override":[{"template":"7","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"left-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"topbottom","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"1","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","video":"https:\/\/news.iq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Afp-20250820-69Yj4nq-V1-Mp41920x1080i60-Fireballlightsupjapaneseskies.mp4"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"jnews_post_split":{"post_split":[{"template":"1","tag":"h2","numbering":"asc","mode":"normal","first":"0","enable_toc":"0","toc_type":"normal"}]},"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1533,473,1342],"class_list":["post-6976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-iq-en","tag-astronomy","tag-japan","tag-nature","post_format-post-format-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}