A flashing fireball dashed across the skies of western Japan, shocking residents and dazzling stargazers, though experts said it was a natural phenomenon and not an alien invasion.

Videos and photos emerged online of the extremely bright ball of light visible for hundreds of miles shortly after 11.00pm local time (1400 BST) on Tuesday.

“A white light I had never seen before came down from above, and it became so bright that I could clearly see the shapes of the houses around us,” Yoshihiko Hamahata, who was driving in Miyazaki prefecture, told the public broadcaster NHK.

“It seemed like daylight. For a moment, I didn’t know what had happened and was very surprised.”

Toshihisa Maeda,the head of Sendai Space Museum in the Kagoshima region in south-western Japan, said it was an exceptionally bright meteor.

It appeared to have gone into the Pacific, he said, adding: “People reported feeling the air vibrate. It was as bright as the moon.”

Objects causing such fireball events can exceed one metre (3ft) in size, according to Nasa. Fireballs that explode in the atmosphere are technically referred to as bolides, although the term fireball is often used interchangeably.