A brilliant streak of light briefly turned night into day across western Japan late Tuesday, with residents from Kyushu to Shikoku and parts of the Kinki region reporting a blue-white flash at about 11:08 p.m. local time. Cameras monitoring Sakurajima volcano in Kagoshima Prefecture, as well as airport and dashboard recorders in Fukuoka and other cities, captured a luminous object descending for roughly four seconds before fading. The Kagoshima office of the Japan Meteorological Agency said the phenomenon was “very likely a fireball,” an unusually bright meteor created when a fragment of space rock enters the atmosphere and burns up. Television Asahi, citing preliminary expert estimates, put the object’s diameter at around 10 metres. No sonic-boom damage, injuries or emergency calls were logged by local police or municipalities, and the agency has not located any meteorite fragments. Fireballs of comparable brightness are considered rare, occurring roughly once a year over Japan, according to astronomers. Meteorologists are analysing footage and crowdsourced sightings to refine the object’s trajectory, which may have ended over open water. The agency is urging anyone who finds unusual debris to report it but says the event poses no ongoing risk.