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Sky conditions in the remote, dry north-western interior of South Africa arenow the subject of considerable interest in view of the imminent constructionof numerous solar power plants in this area. Furthermore, the part of thisregion in which the core of the SKA is to be located (which includes SALT) hasbeen declared an Astronomical Advantage Zone, for which sky brightnessmonitoring will now be mandatory. In this project we seek to characterise thesky brightness profile under a variety of atmospheric conditions. Key factorsare of course the lunar phase and altitude, but in addition the sky brightnessis also significantly affected by the atmospheric aerosol loading, as thatinfluences light beam scattering. In this paper we chose to investigate the skycharacteristics soon after the Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption in 1991, whichresulted in huge ash masses reaching the stratosphere (where they affectedsolar irradiance for several years). We re-reduced photometric sky measurementsfrom the South African Astronomical Observatory archives (and originallyobtained by us) in different wavelengths and in a variety of directions. We usethis data explore relationships between the aerosol loading and the skybrightness in a range of conditions, including several post-Pinatubo phases andduring the passage of biomass burning induced haze and dust clouds. We use thisdata to explore the impact of our findings on the applicability of lightscattering models and light scatterer properties.

South African night sky brightness during high aerosol epochs