MNASSA : Monthly Notes of the Astronomical Society of South Africa

These form an important part of a research facility, often as a sort of pre-publication discussion or a discussion of an individual’s current research, and as such it is virtually impossible to “publish” this material. However by recording the topics discussed in the form below does indicate to those, who are unable to attend, what current trends are and who has visited to do research: it keeps everyone ‘in the loop’ so to speak Also included in this section are the colloquia/seminars at the SAAO, UWC, the Astrophysics, Cosmology and Gravity Centre at UCT, ACGC and the NASSP lectures, aimed the at the students and interested astronomers. In addition there are the SAAO Astro-coffees which are 15-20min informal discussions on just about any topic including but not limited to: recent astro-ph papers, seminal/classic publications, education/outreach ideas and initiatives, preliminary results, student progress reports, conference/workshop feedback and skills-transfer.

This article continues the sequential numbering of reported fireball sightings from southern Africa. By definition, a fireball is any meteor event with brightness equal to or greater than visual magnitude (mv) -4. The following events were reported to the author and details are reproduced as given by the observer [any comments by the author are given in brackets]. All times were converted to UT unless stated, and all coordinates are for epoch J2000.0.

The 11th ASSA Symposium was held from 9 to 11 March, 2018 in the SAAO Auditorium in Observatory, Cape Town. The aim was to discuss what the amateur community could do with current digital technology at a time when there were large scale sky surveys. To achieve this 19 astronomers, both professional and amateur, were invited to present papers. In addition there were a further 30 odd attendees, mostly ASSA members.