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Observatory from across the country, in Hiroshima, Fukuoka and Ehime received calls inquiring about the bright light seen flying through the sky.
A bolide, astronomers explain, represents a meteor that becomes incandescent upon reaching Earth’s atmosphere, creating a fireball of apparent magnitude of -14 or brighter (or brighter than the full moon).
Several witnesses captured the events on camera.
Hidehiko Agata from the Japan National Astronomical Observatory told reporters that the weather conditions were excellent to permit enthusiasts to witness the event.
If any fragments of the bolide survived the fiery plummet into Earth’s atmosphere, they most likely fell into the sea, astronomers said.
And Japan wasn’t the only country fortunate enough to experience cosmic phenomena. In the United States, two cosmic objects were spotted leaving light trails in the night’s sky. The first, astronomers say, was a meteor. It was visible from 11 states, from Georgia and North Carolina to Maryland and even as far as Ohio. Witnesses described the light trail as being in a bright green color.
The intense fireball was reported to the American Meteor Society by as many as 300 eyewitnesses.
Another object was seen in Chicago. Witnesses claim that it was moving more slowly- however, later on, it turned out that the object had been nothing more than a nighttime publicity stunt. The bright white and yellow object proved to be three skydivers drifting with bright flares toward the city’s North Avenue Beach.
“With the naked eye you could see fragments coming off the back of it like it was something burning up.”
Steve Sobel, one witness, said.
Others believed that the burning object may have been a piece of space junk or debris burning as they were falling through the atmosphere.
