By MASAOBU HIGASHIYAMA/ Staff Writer
August 22, 2020 at 16:45 JST
A spectacular fireball lit up the sky over the Kanto region around 10:30 p.m. on Aug. 21.
Experts speculated that the meteor came in over the Pacific in Kanagawa Prefecture and fell on the southern part of the Boso Peninsula in Chiba Prefecture next to Tokyo.
A camera set up in Yokohama by Atom tech. Inc., a company that develops network camera apparatus, captured the dazzling fireball in all its glory.
Daichi Fujii, a curator at the Hiratsuka City Museum, said it was as bright as a full moon.
After analyzing multiple images, Fujii believes the fireball was a chunk of asteroid that broke off from orbit near Jupiter and probably did not burn out.
It was the second such fireball seen over the Kanto region since one in the early hours of July 2.
Later, meteorite fragments were found in two the Chiba Prefecture cities of Narashino and Funabashi.
The National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo has applied to register them as “Narashino inseki (meteorite).”
Stories about memories of cherry blossoms solicited from readers
Cooking experts, chefs and others involved in the field of food introduce their special recipes intertwined with their paths in life.
A series based on diplomatic documents declassified by Japan’s Foreign Ministry
A series on the death of a Japanese woman that sparked a debate about criminal justice policy in the United States
A series about Japanese-Americans and their memories of World War II
Here is a collection of first-hand accounts by “hibakusha” atomic bomb survivors.