A light that streaked across the skies of Japan on Monday was most likely a fireball meteor called a bolide.
Camera footage taken by a moving car during the incident shows a bright light flying across the sky in western Japan. Observatories in western Japanese prefectures, including Fukuoka, Hiroshima and Ehime, received multiple reports of a bright object in the sky, according to The Japan Times.
Associate Professor Hidehiko Agata of Japan's National Astronomical Observatory told the publication that the object was "highly likely" to be a bolide, a fireball of a meteor bright enough to be seen over a wide area.
"Since it was early evening and fine weather, favorable conditions were there for many to witness it," said Agata, according to the Associated Press.
Meteors are fragments of materials found in space between planets that fall through Earth's atmosphere. They catch fire due to friction, which creates bright lights flying through the sky.
Scientists believe that 48.5 tons of meteoric rock falls onto Earth's surface every day, according to NASA.
Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office in Huntsville, Alabama, confirmed to ABC News that a second fireball event occurred an hour later at 6:20 CST over the Midwest.
The second event was not as big as the fireball event in Japan and more isolated, lighting up the skies near Chicago.
"The Chicago event appears to be a slow mover; could be a piece of space junk," Cooke said, according to ABC News. "We're checking into that as well."
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