Residents of the Kanto region of Japan saw a bright meteor in the sky on Monday, January 15, in the morning, according to the Japanese edition of NHK.
Fuji Daichi, a curator specializing in astronomy at the Hiratsuka City Museum in Kanagawa Prefecture, near Tokyo, spoke about the meteor. According to him, cameras installed in his home in Hiratsuka and neighboring Shizuoka Prefecture captured the fireball in the sky early in the morning. The footage shows a meteor appearing in the dawn sky and flying for several seconds before disappearing.
衝撃波の音も録れていました!2024年1月15日6時55分36秒に流れた大火球を、富士から別のカメラで捉えた様子です。火球出現から約4分後の6時59分39秒に轟音が鳴り響きました。 https://t.co/I9ne4yGD2V pic.twitter.com/7WNC7Bg3Ma
– 藤井大地 (@dfuji1) January 15, 2024
Eyewitnesses, mostly from Kanto, reported the sound of an explosion on social media. There was also a shock wave.
Daichi calculated the meteor’s “route” – it flew at a speed of 42.4 km/s and an angle of entry of 23.3 degrees, flying from the coast of Sagami Bay to Nagano Prefecture. On the Google Earth screenshot, the yellow line is the meteor’s trajectory, and the white line is its projection on the ground. It was a fireball of scattered meteors, the expert said.