Asteroid fragments' burning in air lights up night sky in Japan

People in Japan witnessed a rare sight on Tuesday night as the sky got lit up by a fireball.

The astonishing sight was captured by live cameras installed at locations across parts of Kyushu and Shikoku in southern Japan.

According to the experts cited by local media, the fireball produced when asteroid fragments burned up in the atmosphere illuminated the sky in Japan shortly after 11:00 p.m. local time.

Videos posted on social media showed the glowing ball of light streaking across the sky.

The Director of Sendai Space Museum Toshihisa Maeda detailed the phenomenon as the burning of an asteroid as they enter the Earth’s atmosphere from space.

He said, “I imagine the surrounding area became as bright as day for a moment and it’s possible that it fell into the ocean as a meteorite.”

Space objects entering the Earth’s atmosphere are not a rare phenomenon as nearly 500,000 meteorites enter the Earth’s atmosphere every year with most of them falling into the ocean and uninhabited areas.

This fireball phenomenon comes amid scientists being baffled by a space object named 3I/ATLAS racing towards Earth.

A Harvard astrophysicist has raised the alarm that it might be an alien UFO trying to make contact with Earth. 

Dr Avi Loeb expects that if 3I/ATLAS is indeed an alien ship, it could reach Earth by Christmas 2025.