The fireball which lit up Japanese night skies was probably a fragment of an asteroid that burnt upon contact with the Earth's atmosphere.

Kanal24 reports citing Euronews that, weather cameras and mobile phones captured the moment when a fireball lit up the night skies across Japan.

Witnesses report seeing a soundless bright light falling, like a shooting star, illuminating the sky for a few seconds with a greenish glow.

An Associate Professor at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Hitoshi Yamaoka, says he thinks it was a fragment of an asteroid, several centimeters in diameter, that burnt up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

What is a fireball?

Ordinary meteors are pieces of debris, about the size of a grain of sand, that come from asteroids and comets which have burnt upon entering the atmosphere. Exceptionally large and bright meteors are known as fireballs.

Debris from space falls to earth relatively frequently, though not often over urban areas.