NICO SMIT, SCI-FI WRITER, CLANWILLIAM, WESTERN CAPE

tommaso fiscaletti December 18, 2017

‘The half blood is not accepted by anyone, he is not ethnic enough for his own group and not good enough for the group he is descended from. So both groups reject him, but he posesses the skills and knowledge of both groups - the strong characteristics of both groups is combined within him. Even though he is initially rejected by the modern group and the historical native group, at the end of the day he unites them - he is the glue that keeps them together. He is the connection or the missing link between them and the two groups then fight together against what you can call the evil side - the bad guys in the story. With him as the leader figure. In the beginning the natives from the planet Kazdan, the Hunters didn't trust the Neanites who were technologically advanced - almost seen as gods. Like it was in the past when the white man landed in the Cape - everybody thought it was amazing and at the end of the day it wasn't that amazing and there is a golden middle groud to be followed and somebody has to take the lead - that is the half blood that brings the groups together. That is the initiating concept of my sci-fi story.’

Nico Smit, Sci-Fi Writer, Clanwilliam

LIEZEL HOFMAN, LIVING LANDSCAPE PROJECT, CLANWILLIAM, WESTERN CAPE

tommaso fiscaletti December 18, 2017

“For me, my identity is basically the person I’m accepting myself to be and who I believe I am. I don’t think I would identify myself as Xhosa or Tswana, I don’t think I would identify myself as coloured either. My father is coloured and everything in my genes I believe is more connected to an African lifestyle - which includes the Xhosa and Tswana. But currently, I’m the person I believe I am - that is my culture.”

Liezel is employed from twelve years in the museum of the living landscape project, that conceived around the idea of the Cederberg landscape as a time machine, that visitors can ‘travel’ through using the wealth of archaeological material continually discovered on site: structural remains, plants, animals etc.. the legacy of the San, the old Inhabitants of the area. The project looks at the astrological mythology of San people.

PROF. IAN GLASS, ASTRONOMER, CEDERBERG ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY

tommaso fiscaletti December 18, 2017

‘I enjoyed the scientific work, especially solving problems and understanding the physics of the stars, so doing something like this is a kind of motivation for other people to become interested in astronomy and until you studied physics and astronomy you don’t really know what is going on in the stars and you don’t see what professional astronomers are interested in. There are many things happening in our own galaxy and in our own solar system and of course with the space age we know a lot more now about planets and asteroids and many things. So even quite nearby objects turned out to be more interesting than people realised in the past. I studied the heat radiation from stars, with infra-red light. Usually stars that are forming or stars that are dying have a lot of dust around them and this shows up very strongly in the infra-red, so I studied basically variable stars that show up brightly in the infra-red and I studied certain types of galaxies which have active centers, the nuclei we call them - and Quasars. So you think of stars, but dust and gas are also very important parts of the galaxies in the sky.’

FRANCOIS VAN WYK, NIGHT ASSISTANT AND SERVICE OBSERVER, SUTHERLAND, NORTHERN CAPE

tommaso fiscaletti December 18, 2017

'Then you look at Saturn with the nice rings around it, it looks like a sombrero - that is just unbelievable. On the real astronomy side I’ve observed stars with are called roAp stars, it is short for Rapidly oscillating peculiar A stars. These are really peculiar. Those stars oscillate in a short time scale, like 8 minutes. What happens is the stars sort of blows up and gets bigger and fainter, then contracts and gets warmer. That is what you see. My first three years I was working with other people, as I was undergoing training. From there on most of the time I was on my own. Sometimes for 14 hours in winter, just with a CD player, my night lunch and my coffee. Then it is up to you to make all the decisions. You just got to make sure you stay awake and alert. Otherwise you can screw up big time. I did fall asleep, but the thing is, if you feel you are tired it is best to close the dome, switch everything off and sit and sleep. If you leave things on and you fall asleep then you are in trouble.’ - Francois van Wyk, Night Assistant and service observer, Sutherland.

ELISE FILIPPERS, SUTHERLAND, NORTHERN CAPE

tommaso fiscaletti December 18, 2017

Elise lives in Sutherland, home to the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) - the largest optical telescope in the Southern Hemisphere.

CHRIS FORDER, TELESCOPE BUILDER, CEDERBERG ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY

tommaso fiscaletti December 18, 2017

'Are we alone, I don’t know - the thing is we will probably never know. If we find a civilization that can signal to us, we’ve got to be able to signal to them. If they are a 100 light years away we are talking about a 100 years between every communication, and by then the other one may have died out or they may have not reached the communications technology or we may have blown ourselves up enough to have to start all over again. So we will probably not communicate with anyone out there - not in our lifetime. But there is probably someone. We are so proud that we call them aliens - we may be the aliens. Who knows.'

Chris Forder. Amateur Telescope builder.

ANNA SKIPPERS # 1 SUTHERLAND, NORTHERN CAPE

tommaso fiscaletti December 18, 2017

‘That was the most beautiful to me, when there is a shooting star, I always believed you could make wish - for good luck. Then I asked some questions and they answered, ‘o, no - when there is a shooting star, it means it is dead and it is going to fall’ and there where it falls, everything must just pray and ask ‘God don’t let it fall on a house, don’t let it fall on a person’ - because it can burn and kill, and you don’t know if it has fire inside, you don’t know if it has hail inside or even iron inside.’

Anna Skippers, Kamammas Community centre coordinator, Sutherland, Northern Cape.

Anna lives in Sutherland, close to the largest single optical telescope in the Southern Hemisphere.