A brilliant fireball illuminated the Japanese night sky on Wednesday, August 20, 2025, captivating observers across multiple prefectures including Kagoshima, Miyazaki, and Osaka. The celestial event occurred around 11:10 PM local time, with numerous eyewitness accounts and video footage quickly surfacing on social media.
Airport surveillance cameras in Kagoshima, Fukuoka, and Matsuyama also captured the meteor's fiery passage. Experts, such as Toshihisa Maeda, director of the Sendai Space Museum, identified the object as a meteor burning up in Earth's atmosphere. These fireballs are typically fragments of asteroids or cosmic bodies that create a bright glow due to intense friction upon entering the atmosphere at high speeds.
Analysis suggests the meteor likely disintegrated over the Pacific Ocean, south of Kyushu. This event coincided with the active period of the Perseids meteor shower, which runs from July 17 to August 24. While the Perseids are a regular celestial display, exceptionally bright fireballs like this one are a rarer occurrence, potentially seen only once a year. The visibility of this particular fireball was made more remarkable by the bright waning gibbous moon, which typically obscures fainter meteors.
Planetary geoscience experts, including Luke Daly from the University of Glasgow, note that fireballs are significantly larger and more luminous than typical meteors, sometimes reaching the size of a basketball. Some residents in Kagoshima Prefecture reported hearing an explosion-like sound, indicative of a sonic boom generated by the meteor's high entry speed, estimated by Daichi Fujii, a fireball expert at the Hiratsuka City Museum, to be approximately 21 kilometers per second.
Japan has a long history of celestial observation, with records dating back to ancient times, including the Nōgata meteorite found in Fukuoka Prefecture, believed to be the oldest fragment associated with a witnessed meteor fall in Japan, dating to May 19, 861. Fortunately, no injuries or damage have been reported from the recent fireball event, allowing the public to appreciate the natural spectacle without concern.