What’s happening in the sky?

The outreach project on the Elethu wine farm in Bonnievale involving learners from a local school is yielding fascinating results. In our preceding article “Bonnievale goes intergalactic” we said “watch this space” and they did not disappoint.

One of the meteor cameras installed under the Global Meteor Network (GMN), captured a large fireball off the south coast of the Western Cape at 02:01:57 on 11 February 2024. These cameras were initially installed as part of an outreach programme for Grade 10 and 11 learners from the Bonnievale High School, supervised by Prof Mahomed and Llewellyn Cupido of the Stellenbosch University, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering department.

“The meteor entered the atmosphere with geocentric velocity Vg = 61.3 km/sec, and began ablation at altitude 131.947 km above latitude/longitude 34.924619° S, 20.796372° E, and ended at 70.253 km above 34.681514° S, 18.820342° E, with a duration of 3.17 seconds.”

“The path is shown in the figure, commencing due south of Witsand, passed overhead at Struisbaai and ended due south of Pringle Bay, where the bright terminal burst would have occurred 65.2° above the horizon.”

“The orbit is indicative of a cometary fragment from the Oort Cloud”, says Prof Mahomed.

An Oort Cloud is theorized to be a vast cloud of icy planetesimals surrounding the Sun.