‘I photographed this from my backyard here in Brakpan - in the middle of the city. I use multiple different filters like hydrogen alpha, sulphur two and oxygen three. Those filters only allow a narrow spectrum of light through of 6 nanometers. That basically blocks out all the light pollution that one gets in the city, so you can get high-quality pictures from town.’
Read MoreNEIL VILJOEN, TELESCOPE SHOP, BRAKPAN, GAUTENG
JURG WAGENER #2, STAR GAZER, STERLAND, SUTHERLAND, NORTHERN CAPE
’You have to be devoted, I’m basically outside every night. I meet so many people, and it gives me a reward - when people say they enjoyed it. Lastly I would say you learn how insignificant we are in the greater universe and it makes you feel humble - that is the way I want to look at it every night.’
Jurg Wagener, Star Gazer
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STERLAND, SUTHERLAND, NORTHERN CAPE
'I have to agree that it is not only our world - it is such a vast area, it is a never ending story… where do you stop, where do you begin? Once again it makes you feel very humble.’
Jurg Wagener, Star Gazer
JESS VAN ELFEREN, SHOPKEEPER, TELESCOPESHOP, BRAKPAN, GAUTENG
’And then we have Betelgeuse, that's a very important star. It's in the Orion constellation and some scientists to say it's already gone supernova. Some say it still has to. As astronomy is a science, it's still being looked at and studied, so we always say nothing is fact until it is proven. Why? Because man hasn't been in space - we cannot get there. We cannot really study the stars. We don't know anything until we actually have the facts - we do by mathematics and other subjects study space and the universe, but all of it is theoretical until we can prove it's fact.’
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TELESCOPES, TELESCOPE SHOP, BRAKPAN, GAUTENG
‘When I was a young girl, we didn’t have telescopes. We had small binoculars mostly because it was after the world war. Today there are so many telescopes - and they are amazing. From this little size from where you could see the moon and the Planets to that big one over there where you can see literally everything.’ - Jess van Elferen, Shopkeeper, Telescope Shop, Brakpan, Gauteng.
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VISITOR CENTER, SUTHERLAND, NORTHERN CAPE
CHRIS FORDER'S TELESCOPE, CEDERBERG ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY, WESTERN CAPE
'We got music going - we try to keep it to calm music, so that we are not too excited. If you get too excited then things start going wrong and you start doing stupid things. You must just keep calm the whole time while you are imaging. After all, the stars will wait - if you don’t get them tonight, you can get them tomorrow night. Time is nothing to them, time is everything to us. '
Chris Forder. Amateur Telescope builder.
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PERSONAL OBSERVATORY, CLANWILLIAM, NORTHERN CAPE
ASTROGRAPHIC TELESCOPE BUILDING 1890, SAAO, OBSERVATORY, CAPE TOWN
‘Of course I hope with peoples interest we could take tours to see it properly - we have some ideas in the future to have a kind of heritage trail around the place. A lot of interesting scientific discoveries were made there - the discovery of oxygen in stars for example. At the moment there is a more modern telescope mounted on the mount, but that is not used - I would like to put the old telescope back there and restore it to the original. It should be possible. It was moved about 20 years ago but it is still in the dome actually. Of course it is heavy - we’ll need some proper tackle and things to mount it.’
Ian Glass, Professor of astronomy
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BIG MOON # 1 (MC CLEAN TELESCOPE), SAAO, OBSERVATORY, CAPE TOWN
McClean telescope installed in 1897 at the South African Astronomical Observatory in Cape Town.
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