Videos and images posted on social media by residents of Kagoshima and Miyazaki prefectures showed the bright light appearing around 11:08 PM on 19/8.

"A white light I'd never seen before shot down from above," Yoshihiko Hamahata, who was driving in Miyazaki prefecture at the time, said. "It was so bright that I could clearly see the shapes of the surrounding houses. It was as bright as day. I didn't know what happened and was very surprised."

Toshihisa Maeda, head of the Sendai Space Hall in Kagoshima, said fireballs occur when dust, small planetary fragments, and other objects in space burn up as they enter the Earth's atmosphere.

He said the bright light that appeared over western Japan was likely a particularly bright fireball caused by a meteor and may have fallen into the Pacific Ocean.

According to NASA, objects that cause fireballs can be larger than one meter. Fireballs that explode in the atmosphere are technically called bolides, but the terms fireball and bolide are often used interchangeably.

Over 500,000 fireballs occur on Earth each year, mostly falling into the ocean and uninhabited areas. However, larger fireballs can cause damage, such as the Chelyabinsk meteor, which caused injuries and widespread damage when it exploded over Russia's Ural region in 2013.

Huyen Le (According to AFP, NHK, CNA)