Tues, 22 January - We were blessed with really clear and still skies over Cape Town. This was a real benefit to our stargazing, which took place at the Astronomical Society Observatory. Case Risjdik, one of the lead scientists gave an insight to the original purpose of the observatory (accurate time for the Royal navy) and pointed out that they still issue a signal to the current time signal - the gun on Signal Hill.
The SAAO has a collection of instrumentation in display cabinets that had many of our more senior members reminiscing. Some of the instruments are still working, however, Case pleaded with us not to tamper with them. I explained that we are instrumentation people and just have to take things apart! After agreeing to this, it was hard walking around and not being able to 'get to grips'. There are a tremendous number of interesting artefacts (the history, architecture and fittings are interesting enough by themselves).
The most exciting part of the evening was to view the moon, some stars and planets through the last remaining working telescope. The 'scope' was built by Grubb - an Irish scope manufacturer back in 1920 and it still functions beautifully today. Case manoeuvred the four tons by hand and engaged the motor drive, which maintained the scope on the selected target. The motor drive was little more than we used to see in chart recorders about 20 years ago!
Another interesting aspect to the viewing room is the floor. The whole floor is raised or lowered to enable the user to put an eye to the eyepiece. Again, the senior members were in awe at the Victorian engineering employed and still working wonderfully smoothly. At the end of the huge 4 t scope is a small eyepiece, similar in size to that of school lab microscopes. It was what we saw through the eyepiece that made the visit memorable.
We started by looking at the moon surface. The detail was incredible and the image so bright. We then moved on to Saturn and were able to easily see the detail of the rings and moons. This was accompanied by sounds of 'Wow, ooh and incredible' as members stepped up. Case then swung the scope around to see one of the stars in the Orion constellation. If you look up to Orion's 3-star belt, just above and to the right there is a line of three stars. The middle star of this three was our next target. When we looked, this tiny star that we see with the naked eye is in fact a whole collection of stars and star clouds.
Lastly, we moved to Jupiter which looked bright to the naked eye but through the eyepiece we could clearly see the patterns of rings around the planet and albeit faint colouration. Case spent some time answering questions and discussed their latest exciting project - the South African Large Telescope (SALT). It was encouraging to see such enthusiasm from what is obviously a dedicated person. To end our visit, Case showed us their library facility in the main and original Royal Navy building with books and journals (complete volumes) dating back to the early 1800s. This was like stepping back in time or being on a movie set. The SAAO have an interesting website where more details about their activities can be seen as well as the SALT project ( www.saao.ac.za)
We have already started talking to Case about arranging an overnight trip to Sutherland where we can stay up late and watch the night sky under some expert guidance. Given the fact it is Sutherland, we feel we will need to complement this with potjie, gluhwein, OBs and hot chocolate. If there are any members who would like to join us for such a trip, please let us know now as this will improve your chances of attending and allows us to give SAAO some idea of numbers to expect.
Derwyn Oxley
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