Several reports have been received of a bright object seen in the night sky on Saturday, December 21.

Alex Atkins writes:
“On the 21 st December we saw a glowing object moving through the sky in a low trajectory – from the south, moving towards East London. It glowed very bright and an orange colour, passed by and then dimmed and got brighter several times before ‘burning out’. I could actually hear what sounded like a gas torch burning.”

Alison and Katie Fourie (Roodepoort, Gauteng) write that on Saturday, December 21 at 20:30 they saw a
“very low bright orange dazzling like a star but very low in the sky below the clouds, 4 times larger than Venus which is the brightest star at the moment in the sky, we watched it come from the West moving East, and then before it went up into the clouds the bright orange disappeared and there was a solid black object, a solid object like an oblong shape, it had definite 2 corners, it was silent as it was flying as it went right over the house on its path it was taking, we watched it fly and there was no sound at all, it seemed to be under control and was flying not floating like a chinese lantern would, it had a path it took across the sky, it was stationary a few times. We all went out to watch it, 4 of us. My daughter Katie spotted it from the lounge and we all ran outside to the front and watched it approach and go over the top of our house, so we ran around to the back of the garden to watch it go into the distance. My husband said it was not a flare, plane or helicopter, nor a lantern, it was too big to be any of these, it was bright sparkly like a star but muchly bigger and down low very low and silent. It was like a big huge star but orange. But low, about half way between the clouds (there was a few clouds around here and there) and the ground. It was a clear night with a few clouds here and there, calm weather, no wind. We are in Roodekrans, Roodepoort, Gauteng, South Africa. Do you know if anyone else saw this object. The light was like flaring in directions, left, right and front., then it flicked off and we saw it was an object.”

Please submit any other sightings of this fireball to the ASSA Observing Section Director, Kos Coronaios.