Skywatch Friday, telescopes and Arty Farty stuff

Hi. Firstly, I must apologise for being so scare recently. I have not posted or visited much, because I have an art exhibition on, which opened on Tuesday. There was the usual last minute flurry of activity right up till the first guest walked into the gallery for the opening. (Max-e covered the opening, including the surprise arrival of the man everyone loves to hate in this town, on his blog yesterday.)

And while I was hanging pictures some rotten $#^%&^% stole both electronic wing mirrors off my car. So the last couple of days have been spent rushing around trying to sort that out, as well as coping with builders, who are still hard at work transforming our courtyard into a wasteland of mess and chaos, before if hopefully morphs into a useful art studio in the near future.

Then, I visited the Cuyler Street gallery yesterday, to discover that the exhibition the delightful owner Tossie offered me is not at the end of March, as I had thought, but opens on the 4th March. Guys, that's just over 2 weeks from now... eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!! So apart from having to urgently produce 3 paintings on commission for a corporate client who wants them 'yesterday', I must also produce enough new work to fill 2 rooms of the gallery. And I thought going into art full time would be less stressful than running an interior design business, silly me!!.........Actually, to be fair, it is, and I am loving every minute of it. I find tight deadlines help to keep me on my toes and get the old creative juices pumping.

But I guess you can understand why blogging has had to be bumped down the priority list a notch or 2 (along with cooking and housework hehe, any excuse for that!)

Anyway, before I rush off to splash more paint around, here is my Skywatch for this week.

I thought I'd take you on a quick journey to Sutherland, in mid winter. We went to see the famous wild flowers of the west coast (Namaqualand) a couple of years ago. It was the end of August, officially spring, but winter had forgotten to leave!

Just to set the scene for you, most of the journey took place between the Band of mountains that divides the coastal belt of South Africa from the inland plateau, and the plateau itself. The major part of this plateau, beyond these mountains, is an arid, open area known as the Karoo. Because it is semi-desert, it is characterised by dry rocky plains, wide open spaces, and scrubby vegetation. It also has extremes of heat and cold. The area where the Karoo and the mountains meet is a fascinating transition zone. The moist sea air from the coast drops most of its rain on these mountains, producing lush valleys that are home to very productive fruit farms, while just next to them are bare mountaintops.



Heading towards the little Karoo town of Steytlerville, and it is cool despite the blue skies. In Port Elizabeth, skywatching usually consists of sunrises and sunsets. because there is almost always a coastal haze in the air, objects like stars etc are fuzzy, and killed by the city lights. Here in the Karoo, the air is sharp and thin, so everything looks clearer and brighter, even the con-trails!



Heading towards the little village of Willowmore. We are in a valley between two bands of mountains, called the Langkloof (literally "long valley"), and there is a carry-over here of the mediterranean climate of the Western Cape, so it gets winter rainfall. This is icy cold windswept rain, as opposed to the fat warm raindrops experienced in the summer rainfall are to the north.
As a matter of interest, note how narrow the cement road is in this remote stretch, when a car approaches, you each keep one wheel on the road and the other on the gravel verge. You can see the heavy clouds and rain on the windscreen too.







Approaching the pretty little hamlet of Prince Albert, nestled among the Swartberg mountains, and here you see the village spotlighted as the sun finds a gap in the clouds.





We stayed in a delightful Guesthouse in an old mill-house, next to an earth dam. The sunset over the dam was lovely, and we awoke to heavy frost.





The cold sky reflected in the windscreen. I realise that for those of you who have had months of thick snow, this is childsplay, but trust me, for us thin blooded coastal types who consider 16 degrees C to be miserable, this was FREEZING. We were togged out in layers of clothes, beanies, scarves etc!


I loved the typical little Karoo style cottages against the cloudy sky.


Leaving Prince Albert and heading towards Sutherland, we leave the mountains and their clouds in the distance, and enter the real arid part of the Karoo. You can clearly see in all these pix, but particularly this one, how the clouds are linked to the mountains, and the Karoo itself has clear blue skies.


But, do NOT be fooled by the blue skies, the air is biting here!


Sutherland on a mountaintop in the middle of the Karoo, and it is the coldest place in South Africa. It is an arid, desert type of cold that results in amazingly clear skies in the the dry thin air. And so to the ULTIMATE SKYWATCH........ the array of southern hemisphere telescopes on a mountaintop outside town, including the massive new SALT.






The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) is the largest single optical telescope in the southern hemisphere, with a hexagonal mirror array 11 metres across. Although very similar to the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) in Texas, SALT has a redesigned optical system using more of the mirror array. It is able to record distant stars, galaxies and quasars a billion times too faint to be seen with the unaided eye - as faint as a candle flame at the distance of the moon.
The construction of SALT has been funded by a consortium of international partners from South Africa, the United States, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. Many of the people working on the telescope never leave their own country, they work at home on images transmitted to them from the mountain at Sutherland, while snug in their offices. Very wise, apparently. My father-in-law went there late last year and said it is incredibly miserable and uncomfortable in there!

Sadly it was fully booked the night we were there so we could only view it from the distant main road. But I'm sure we'll be back, and when we do go there you'll be the first to see all the pix!!

By the way we were camping in a little nylon tent and it was minus 9 degrees there that night, so we moved on to Calvinia which was only marginally warmer, we still woke up to find the tent stiff and crispy and white with frost! But that is a story for another day.... cheers for now.