WATCH: ‘Shooting star’, ‘meteor-like’ object spotted over Gauteng Photo: Supplied
What was the bright, shining travelling object over Gauteng on Sunday night? Could it be a meteor or a shooting star? Watch video here.
WATCH: ‘Shooting star’, ‘meteor-like’ object spotted over Gauteng Photo: Supplied
A bright, shining travelling object over Gauteng was captured by cameras on Sunday evening.
Social media was abuzz with people claiming that the bright, shining travelling light captured on camera was a meteor.
SA Astronomical Observatory astronomer Daniel Cunnama said on Monday morning what Gauteng residents witnessed was likely pieces of an old rocket travelling in the sky.
“It was identified as: Space junk reentry- 52796 the Russian SL-4 rocket upper stage used for the Progress MS-20 ISS resupply mission of 2022-06-03 decays over South Africa.”
Cunnama
Last month we got to view the full Flower Moon temporarily turn red overnight.
According to NASA , the same phenomenon that makes our sky blue and our sunsets red causes the Moon to turn red during a lunar eclipse. It’s called Rayleigh scattering. Light travels in waves, and different colors of light have different physical properties. Blue light has a shorter wavelength and is scattered more easily by particles in Earth’s atmosphere than red light, which has a longer wavelength.
Last year South Africans were treated to a spectacular show in the sky on Tuesday evening as a large shooting star known as a bolide could be seen from all over SA.
This show was watched from all over South Africa.
Cunnama explained that it is not a meteor shower but a bolide.
This spectacular show was watched from all over South Africa on Tuesday evening.
“A bolide is a single meteor breaking up upon entry.”
Cunnama said the show tonight was completely unexpected.
“A bolide is a very bright meteor. We expect probably 10s of them per year, but we can’t predict when or where. They are from rocks of 1-10m across entering our atmosphere and breaking up.”
Cunnama
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He furthermore said it was a once-off event and said it could also be described as a shooting star.