Astronomers are still not sure about the origin of the meteor that lit up the night sky on November 21 or where it might have impacted the earth.

According to Mr Tim Cooper (Director of the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa’s Comet & Meteor Section) it is possible that the object was a cometary fragment.

“What lends credence to this possibility is the short duration (nearly all reports say three to four seconds) and the fact that this was claimed to be a very, very energetic event,” Cooper said. The event’s magnitude is still pegged at -18.

“Only one of our seismic network stations, the one at Musina, picked up something, possibly a sonic boom at about 23:00 local time on November 21. We are presently still waiting for feedback from the CTBTO regarding the infrasound data, but it appears as if the event may have been recorded at three infrasound stations. As these things go, the data in-terpretation may take some time to do, but hopefully we’ll get to the bottom of this in due course,” said Mr Freddie Roelofse, senior petrologist at the Council for Geoscience.

Looking at the path the meteor took, Roelofse says it suggests that the meteor travelled in a northerly direction and broke up or impacted somewhere in eastern Botswana or Zimbabwe.

“A number of people around the Tuli block border area reported hearing an explosion-type noise, so it seems that, if anything remains of this meteor/object, then it may have fallen there,” is the view of Dr Claire Flanagan, director of the Johannesburg Planetarium.

“Here at the planetarium, I’m still following up and collating reports. One thing I can say is that there’s been a huge amount of public interest - probably more than in any other similar sighting since I’ve been here,” Flanagan said.