A brilliant fireball streaked across the skies of western Japan at 11:08 p.m. on 19 August, illuminating parts of Kyushu, Shikoku and the Kinki region with a flash bright enough to cast shadows and momentarily turn night into day. The phenomenon was captured on live-stream cameras aimed at the Sakurajima volcano in Kagoshima Prefecture, Fukuoka Airport and Kansai International Airport, and was widely reported by domestic broadcasters and wire services. Daichi Fujii, a curator at the Hiratsuka City Museum who analysed footage from multiple monitoring cameras, calculated that the object entered the atmosphere at roughly 21 kilometres per second and followed a 58-degree angle before probably plunging into the sea south of Kyushu. Based on its luminosity, Fujii estimated the body’s diameter at “several metres.” Hitoshi Yamaoka, an associate professor at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, separately told media the meteor may have been as large as 10 metres when it was still in space, putting its brightness on par with the 2013 Chelyabinsk event in Russia. Despite the intensity of the flash and reports of a sonic boom in some areas, police and local authorities said they had received no reports of damage or injuries. Experts are assessing whether any fragments may have survived atmospheric entry.