Shine bright like a diamond

The brilliant SunStar atop Signal Hill in Cape Town

This birthday was all about diamonds. The baseball diamond at Yankee Stadium for Vince, a black diamond necklace for me, and the diamonds in the sky over Cape Town and the Karoo for the both of us.

Yankee stadium

Vince was in New York for his birthday (May 12) celebrating with his BFF Ric (May 8) and my brother, Bob (May 14) at Yankee Stadium. He was back in time for my birthday though in Cape Town on May 15.

I spent my birthday cashing in on my Mother's Day present in Cape Town before joining Vince in the evening for a delicious birthday dinner at La Mouette in Seapoint.













 

birthday bouillabaisse

HBD Darlene and Vince!

And we both celebrated our birthdays with a stellar weekend in the Karoo in order to visit the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) and do some serious star-gazing.

Since the early 1970s, the major telescopes of the SAAO have operated on a hilltop 1800 meters above sea level, near the Karoo village of Sutherland. The site was chosen for its good weather, semi-desert setting, absence of light and other pollution. The sky is visible 80% of the time!

wire sculpture of SALT

We signed up for two tours of the SAAO. First, a daytime guided walk through the Visitor Center and guided tour of selected research telescopes including the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), the largest single optical telescope in the southern hemisphere and among the largest in the world.

The Visitors Center was fascinating. We saw an excellent short film written by Charles and Ray Eames and produced by IBM called Powers of Ten to help us get our heads around light years and distance and the relationship with time. The documentary presents an excellent depiction of the scale of the universe using the exponential factor of 10, first expanding out from the Earth until the entire universe is surveyed, then reducing inward until a single atom and its quarks are observed. It's on Youtube and you should check it out.

And then we were guided through some illuminating exhibits to help us understand the lifespan of stars and the inner working of telescopes.

a "touch" exhibit of the yellow, red and white stars of the Southern Cross

Vince ponders SALT

Finally we drove up another 1000 meters to the top of the mountain to visit the research center itself. It was like a large telescope "campus."

Vince ponders the reflecting mirrors

We were able to go inside SALT and another large manned telescope and allowed to walk freely around the other 20 or so remote controlled telescopes at the center. Several countries were responsible for the construction as well as the ongoing maintenance of SALT including the USA. And in return those countries have access to the data it retrieves.

The other remote telescopes are all owned by different (mostly, if not all) Northern Hemisphere countries around the world - including Japan, Russia, Sweden and Poland - who manipulate them remotely and collect data from the comfort of their own labs in their native country.

Vince inside another telescope

the USA telescopes

The United States solely maintains three dedicated research telescopes on the campus.

We had also pre-booked for a night tour to go back to the SAAO after dark in order to view some interesting objects in the sky through two dedicated visitor telescopes, a 16" Meade and a 14" Celestron set up near the Visitors Center. We were not going to be allowed to actually observe the sky from the research center itself because SAAO is a continuously on-going project and therefore strictly "lights out" once the sun sets. Even our little car headlights climbing the mountain would interfere with its highly sensitive instruments.

Even though the location of the SAAO provides clear skies 80% of the time, that still means 20% of the time the skies are cloudy. And indeed, on both the previous two nights before we arrived the skies over Sutherland had clouded over enough after sundown that the nightly star-gazing had been cancelled. What a bummer! Our tour guide was concerned that the same thing might happen that evening and she warned us to check the visibility ourselves before we headed back up the mountain for the night tour.

But as it turned out, we ended up not going back up to the Visitors Center anyway after dark. We stopped back in at the Ou Meule Resturant in Sutherland for a beer after the day tour and were convinced by the pub owner that we would be better off doing our stargazing from the farm of a local entrepreneur named Jurg rather than go back up to the SAAO. He had done both several times and highly recommended Jurg's set-up. As a matter of fact, we had passed Jurg's farm on our way into Sutherland from the guest farm where we were staying and had wondered about it.

Jurg's stargazing farm

He told us that Jurg has five of the exact same telescopes that we would be using at SAAO. And if we chose the farm instead, we wouldn't have to drive the extra 15 km up the hill in the dark to the Visitors Center, saving us a total of 30 minutes of driving up and back.

We saw his point. And it seemed like less of an investment in case the stargazing was indeed cancelled that evening. We would be disappointed of course, but even more so if we rushed up the hill in the dark to be told the stargazing was off.

there's a telescope inside that protective cover

In any event, since the farm was on our way back to our guest cottage from town, we reasoned we would be able to make it back to Rooikloof in time for a final birthday nightcap in our boma. Win win.

And were we were glad we did! For one thing we needed that extra 15 minutes for dinner which, although excellent, took a full two hours. We had made a six o'clock dinner reservation at Cluster d'Hôte thinking we'd have plenty of time, but the dinner moved at a "leisurely pace" -  meaning we didn't leave the restaurant until literally 7:58. Yet we were still able to make it to the farm on time by 8. We would have definitely been late if we had to drive that extra 15 minutes up the mountain.

Secondly, it was cold! Popular myth has it that Sutherland is the coldest place in SA. It's not. That dubious distinction goes to Buffelsfontein in the Eastern Cape. But on an open plateau in the winter in the Karoo, I would have believed it too. And it would have been even colder another 1000 meters up that hill at the Visitors Center. And windier! We were in well-protected boma and at least we felt no wind chill whatsoever.

photo taken bu one of the SAAO telescopes

The night sky was unbelievable! Vince and I both agreed it was the most stars we have ever seen in any sky anywhere. Northern or Southern Hemisphere. Ever. We could hardly even locate the usually easy to spot Southern Cross because it was completely surrounded by billions and billions of competing stars in the Milky Way.

We gazed for over two hours and saw the most incredible objects. All five of the Big 5 of the African Sky. The Milky Way - I have never seen it so dense! The Southern Pleiades. the Coalsack Nebula, Omega Sentauri, and Eta Carina.

The Jewel Box

We clearly saw the two Clouds of Magellan with the naked eye and we observed the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud through the telescope. And the Jewel Box star cluster in the Southern Cross.

Scorpio is Alex's sun sign

There were two planets in the sky that night. We were able to observe two windstorms on Jupiter and six of its moons through the telescope! We also could distinctly see the rings of Saturn and three of her moons.

Leo is Nick's sun sign

Along with Gemini and Sagittarius, Jurg also pointed out the constellations of Scorpio and Leo. Cool! Our son Alex was born under the sign of Scorpio and our son Nick under Leo.









The End.

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