HEMELLIGGAAM or THE ATTEMPT TO BE HERE NOW (CHAPTER ONE)
TOMMASO FISCALETTI and NIC GROBLER

FACE IN THE HOLE, SA NATIONAL SPACE AGENCY # 1, HERMANUS, WESTERN CAPE

DANIE GOUWS # 1, (HELMHOLTZ COIL CALIBRATION SYSTEM), SANSA, HERMANUS

The connection between distant heavenly bodies, the Earth and our own bodies inadvertently creates a reconfigured awareness of our environment.

KNERSVLAKTE (GNASHING PLAIN) # 1, NORTHERN CAPE

REST STOP ON R27, NORTHERN CAPE

SALT, SAAO, SUTHERLAND, NORTHERN CAPE

The R27 road passes through exceptionally desolate areas and is one of the main routes from Cape Town towards the SKA project site, where there is a project underway to build the worlds largest radio telescope.

• ‘My first three years, I was working with a team as I was undergoing training. From there on, most of the time, I was on my own. Sometimes for 14 hours straight in winter. Just me, a CD player, my night lunch and coffee.’

FRANCOIS VAN WYK
Night Assistant and service observer, South African Astronomical Observatory, Sutherland.

SALT (Southern African Large Telescope) at the South African Astronomical Observatory, just outside Sutherland in the Northern Cape. It is one of the largest optical telescopes in the world - so powerful and sensitive that it could spot a candle flame on the moon.

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WILHELMINA BOSTAANDER, CARNARVON, NORTHERN CAPE

DIE HEMELBLOM # 1 (FROM "DIE HEMELBLOM" BY JAN RABIE, 1971), CARNARVON, NORTHERN CAPE

I’ll just tell them it is a thorny tree, it can get stuck into your clothes - you have to pull it out. It goes so deep into your skin that you need to rip it out - it is very dangerous plant. I don’t even want to get close to it and I keep my distance when I water it. It will pierce straight through your clothes into your skin - the thorns are that sharp.’

The same species of plant that was chosen for the photograph of Die Hemelblom was found growing in front of Wilhelmina Bostaander’s house in Carnarvon. Photograph inspired by Die Hemelblom, by Jan Rabie, first published 1971.

• ‘For now it was just strange. Only later it would become frightening.'

'Only in the morning, when the daylight crossed over the highland rocks and fynbos, they saw how strange and otherworldly the hemelblom was. The seeds that fell the previous afternoon shot up incredibly fast, each on a lump of roots that didn't enter the ground, but just gripped the ground from above. In one single night each plant became fully grown and was spreading seeds so that new plants would shoot up. In one night the hemelblomme multiplied a hundredfold. For now it was just strange. Only later it would become frightening.'

From Die Hemelblom (The Heavenly Flower) by Jan Rabie, 2nd edition 1974, Tafelberg, first published 1971. Translated from the original Afrikaans by Nic Grobler.
Photograph inspired by Die Hemelblom (The Heavenly Flower), an Afrikaans sci-fi novel by Jan Rabie.

HEMELBLOM (1971), CARNARVON, NORTHERN CAPE

The Hemelblom was sent to the earth by a concerned galactic council to ensure the survival of life on earth in the face of a new world war. The plant was specifically grown to remove the poisonous elements introduced by humans - feeding on pollution it would rapidly cover the earth and wipe out most of humankind but leave a new earth covered with fresh fertile soil.

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OFENTSE LETEBELE, IZIKO PLANETARIUM PRESENTER, CAPE TOWN

Ofentse Letebele is part of the team working to translate some of the old Planetarium shows to the new Digital Dome system.

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DANIE GOUWS # 2, (HELMHOLTZ COIL CALIBRATION SYSTEM), SANSA, HERMANUS

‘…then they can see changes in the sharks behaviour, so most definitely animals use magnetic fields for navigation.’

‘We’ve also built a coil like this under water before, where the field is changed to be like it would be in Northern America - then they can see changes in the sharks behaviour, so most definitely animals use magnetic fields for navigation. People doing pigeon racing where there is a magnetic storm where the field varies quite rapidly the pigeons get confused and lost. Especially for people in the US who do pigeon racing - for them space weather forecasting is important. We’ve imported hundreds of these specific sensors, and we sell them to Denel, and they placed them on some system that flies towards a target and goes kaboom at the end.’

DANIE GOUWS

SANSA, SA NATIONAL SPACE AGENCY # 2, HERMANUS, CAPE TOWN

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NEW PETROL STATION, CARNARVON, NORTHERN CAPE

SKAAP, CARNARVON, NORTHERN CAPE

“Greetings, Earthling. We come in peace. Take us to your leader.”

- Alien in an old Petrol pump joke. Petrol pump found in the small town of Carnarvon near the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) site - where there is an international collaboration around building the world’s largest radio telescope.

• 'We saw it from far away, the dish - we saw it going up and then turning. Turning all around. It doesn't move fast - just slowly all around. It is very beautiful to see it happening.'

- Abie Makok, Church Warder, United Reformed Church, Carnarvon, Northern Cape.

• ‘To me he was the ultimate perfection I found on earth, of love and faithfulness and virtue. And I lost him, and I miss him dearly...’

JAKHALS (FROM LOELOERAAI BY CJ LANGENHOVEN, 1923), KLAARSTROOM, WESTERN CAPE

'To whom shall I dedicate this book? It is about a being who is not human, who is higher than man - an unattainable superior.

I think I will go to the opposite - and then I will not have to look very far. I lost a friend a long time ago - a friend that I loved and who loved me. I will never see him again forever; but forever I will never forget him. Now, after all these years, there is not a day that passes without his image coming before me and I'm grieving about him. To him I was the higher being - a Loeloeraai of a higher existence. To me he was the ultimate perfection I found on earth, of love and faithfulness and virtue. And I lost him, and I miss him dearly. . .

I dedicate this work:

To the memory of

MY FRIEND AND DOG, JAKHALS’

From the dedication of Loeloeraai, CJ Langenhoven, 4th Edition 1929, First published 1923. Translated from original Afrikaans by Nic Grobler. Photographs inspired by Loeloeraai, CJ Langenhoven.

Loeloeraai is a visitor from Venus, who spends about two weeks with a family in Oudtshoorn. They end up going on a small trip to the moon before Loeloeraai returns to Venus.

JAKHALS, KLAARSTROOM, WESTERN CAPE

Dedication to Jakhals. CJ Langenhoven, Loeloeraai, 1929 4th edition. Originally published 1923.

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NEELSIE AND JAKHALS (FROM LOELOERAAI BY CJ LANGENHOVEN, 1923) KLAASTROOM, WESTERN CAPE

THEO FERREIRA, PLANETARIUM MANAGER, CAPE TOWN

‘…This is strange because we are looking at objects develop, seeing them as they were a very long time ago.’

‘What makes this system so powerful is that you can leave the earth - you are not stuck on the earth anymore. Traditional planetarium shows are stuck on the earth looking up at the night sky, now we can fly away from the earth and travel through the universe, moving out into space - right back to the beginning. We don’t actually have data sets that go that far back, but be can get really close, looking at some of the galaxies billions of light years away from us and, of course, when you are looking at those galaxies you are looking back in time - into the past. This is strange because we are looking at objects develop, seeing them as they were a very long time ago.’

THEO FERREIRA

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CHRIS FORDER'S TELESCOPE, CEDERBERG ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY, WESTERN CAPE

‘Time is nothing to them, time is everything to us.’

‘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

WANDA DIAZ-MERCED, ASTRONOMER, SAAO, OBSERVATORY, CAPE TOWN

'Do you want to hear it? It is nothing spectacular. But you’ll get an idea of what happens during the eclipse. Maximum brightness, first contact, second contact… getting close to totality - It doesn’t go completely silent because you will always have some light. We were able to get our sensor to be sensitive enough to detect luminosity. My friends at the University of Harvard were able to achieve minus 1 lux of sensitivity, that means it is a little bit more sensitive than the human eye.'

WANDA DIAZ-MERCED
Astronomer

WANDA DIAZ-MERCED, OBSERVATORY, CAPE TOWN

Wanda was a post doctoral fellow at the South African Astronomical Observatory in Cape Town and currently works with the Office of Astronomy for Development(OAD) where she has led the OAD project AstroSense since April 2014. She helped develop sonification methods that allow us to listen to the stars. Her research in this field started after losing her sight as an undergraduate at the University of Puerto Rico.

• ‘If we start sharing those experiences, those practices, those stories - it is one way in which we can unite our people.’

SIVUYILE MANXOYI, SAAO, OBSERVATORY, CAPE TOWN

‘It is in the nature of Astronomy, because stars are visible everywhere - irrespective of where you are. Maybe in the early hours of the morning or the evening you will be able to see stars, so the whole population of the world, each culture has developed a certain relationship with the stars. Because everyone has a relationship with the stars, they have named stars according to their culture using their own languages and have developed traditions and ceremonies that are linked to certain stars and planets. So I think it can form a basis for humanity, the world, to say that we all have a relationship with the stars and we have used stars for different purposes. If we start sharing those experiences, those practices, those stories - it is one way in which we can unite our people.’

SIVUYILE MANXOYI
South African Astronomical Observatory, SALT Collateral Benefits Programme

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KAROO FYNBOS, BETWEEN CALVINIA AND WILLISTON, NORTHERN CAPE

OLD ANALOGUE WORKSTATION, PLANETARIUM, CAPE TOWN

‘But all in all you are part of the universe, you know, the universe is you, the universe is me...’

'You know when you look at the sun, from a distance, like when it is on the horizon before it sets. You are not exactly sure where it is and how it relates to you and your life - you just know it is something that is out there. You are so far away from it, you don’t actually know that is very big. You could fit like a million earths into the sun - that is how big it is. It is hard to grasp. You know you are part of this world, but the universe can feel like something else - far from you. Even at night, you are thinking: there is the universe and here am I. But all in all you are part of the universe, you know, the universe is you, the universe is me, the universe is around - the space we are living in is the universe. This is not just earth and your life and then the universe is over there - you are in the universe. So in terms of understanding the whole universe like that. Ja… ja… a very very big place you know - really no one can understand how big it is, like fully understand. You can talk numbers, like 13,7 billion light years - what is that? You don’t know, but it’s big, something very big.’

LUZUKO DALASILE
Planetarium presenter

LUZUKO DALASILE, IZIKO PLANETARIUM PRESENTER, CAPE TOWN

This is a transition area between Planetarium entrance and the Planetarium dome - An area where the viewers eyes are given some time to adjust to the darkness that they will be in when inside the dome.

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ABIE MAKOK, CHURCH WARDER, CARNARVON, NORTHERN CAPE

SAAO # 1, SUTHERLAND, NORTHERN CAPE

'We are leaving a memory - an inheritance through the SKA. We are staying positive because a change is coming into the land - so that many people can see. We heard about changes in Sutherland, and now it is happening here as well. Many are negative but they perhaps do not know what is really happening. For our children this will help them, to go into a direction to study, at the University. They spoke about this at the meeting, going in this direction for the youth. For the future I'd love for the children to learn, and not struggle with work, to get a bursary and to study further.'

ABIE MAKOK
Church warder

• ‘Then you look at Saturn with the nice rings around it, it looks like a sombrero - that is just unbelievable.'

'With the 1.9m we were looking at the spectra itself. Like looking at a prism, we used diffraction gratings where you could shift the light and look at different parts of the colour spectrum - from there you can tell from what stars were made of and so forth. Just doing star gazing, especially if you look at Jupiter and Saturn, it blows your mind away. If you look at Jupiter it looks like a solar system on its own. The big mother planet with a few small moons around it, and from time to time you see one of the moons disappear. Then you look at Saturn with the nice rings around it, it looks like a sombrero - that is just unbelievable.'

FRANCOIS VAN WYK
Night Assistant and service observer

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VR3 ROCKET (FROM JAN RABIE'S "DIE GROEN PLANEET" 1971), AFRIKAANS TAALMONUMENT, PAARL, WESTERN CAPE

'"Ten . . . Nine . . . Eight . . . Seven . . . Six . . . Five . . . Four . . . Three . . . Two . . . One . . . Zero!"
The constant punch of thunder shakes the whole area. All eyes are focussed on the heavens or monitors that show images of the heavens. Inside them VR3 shrinks on top of an intense column of fire, first moving slowly, then faster, then unbelievably fast until it microscopically swims into the blue sea of heaven.'

'If man ventures out into space, he needs to be prepared to realise quite a few other things. That he was not the first intelligent being to do so and that he was not even the first child of Terra to leave his mother planet in this way. He'll learn to be humble. And further: That Terra is not the only planet in the heavens. That he can forget his allegiance to Terra. That he himself might change out in space, that he will never totally be and think the same as his fellow humans on Terra.'

From chapter 1 and chapter 11, Die Groen Planeet (The Green Planet), Jan Rabie, First edition, 1961. Translated from the original Afrikaans by Nic Grobler.

Photograph inspired by Die Groen Planeet, Jan Rabie, 1961.

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METEORITE, PLANETARIUM, CAPE TOWN, WESTERN CAPE

ANNA SKIPPERS, SUTHERLAND, NORTHERN CAPE

‘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

ANNA SKIPPERS # 3, SUTHERLAND, NORTHERN CAPE

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

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

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ELISE FILIPPERS, SUTHERLAND, NORTHERN CAPE

SAAO OBSERVATORY # 7, SUTHERLAND, NORTHERN CAPE

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SAAO OBSERVATORY # 9, SUTHERLAND, NORTHERN CAPE

PROJECTION SCREEN, CEDERBERG ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY, CEDERBERG

BLACK ROCKS # 3, BETWEEN CALVINIA AND WILLISTON, NORTHERN CAPE

Anyway, it was so great though seeing these old guys, listening to Led Zeppelin, who go up there every two weeks, observing through the night. It’s their thing, it is like playing golf to them'

'We all sat down in this amphitheatre - everyone so excited. Waiting for it to start, and then every now and then a car would arrive in the parking lot and its lights would shine onto the screen and then everyone would freak out a bit. This guy gave a presentation, using like Hubble telescope photographs, each and every photo - incredibly impressive full multicoloured images. This all whilst telling us about the telescopes they themselves have built and that we will be able to see Jupiter with them after the presentation. When we eventually went to look through the telescopes - it was all monochrome tiny little things, no multicolored Hubble stuff. Anyway, it was so great though seeing these old guys, listening to Led Zeppelin, who go up there every two weeks, observing through the night. It’s their thing, it is like playing golf to them'

DENNIS WILLIAMS
Visitor to Cederberg Astronomical Observatory.

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CHRIS FORDER, TELESCOPE BUILDER, CEDERBERG ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY

‘But there is probably someone. We are so proud that we call them aliens - we may be the aliens. Who knows.'

'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

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BLACK ROCKS # 1, BETWEEN CALVINIA AND WILLISTON, NORTHERN CAPE

TEMBA MATOMELA, EDUCATOR, PLANETARIUM OUTREACH OFFICER, EXPERT OF INDIGENOUS ASTRONOMY

ELSABE UYS, IZIKO PLANETARIUM PRESENTER, CAPE TOWN

‘…when you see a meteor coming down you are actually seeing one of those bad ancestors being kicked out of the celestial sphere…’

'Meteorites or shooting stars are regarded in the Xhosa speaking community as a bad luck omen. This is because it is believed that when somebody dies they become an ancestor and the spirit of that dead person is wandering among the stars guarding us from the evil spirits. So if, perhaps, one dies as a bad person then that person would be a bad spirit or ancestor and up in the celestial sphere the good ancestors would kick out the bad ancestors - so when you see a meteor coming down you are actually seeing one of those bad ancestors being kicked out of the celestial sphere and it falls down. When you see this we say ‘let the bad luck pass us for we are not the only one who saw that’ - meaning that we associate that with bad spirit.'

Temba Matomela

• 'The place where I was born influenced my life to a great extent - I was born in the Northern Cape, in a small town called Upington, where the summers would be so hot you couldn't sleep indoors; we would carry our beds outside and sleep there. That is where my love of stars started, and it kept on influencing the rest of my life - it is as if I was born to do this. I'm at my happiest when I am here and telling people what they can see up there in the night sky. When I've been away from the planetarium and I come back to it again and activate the system and see what is up there, it is like coming home. It really touches me - I remember showing children for the first time with the new system flying away from Earth, and seeing planet Earth projected on the dome, even though I knew it was just a projection - to me it was such an emotional moment, to see our planet so fragile, so beautiful, so blue, projected on the dome. I could share that moment with the children as it felt like they were with me from the responses I got. You can do so much more with the new system than the old one, although I'm still sometimes very nostalgic about the old system, how it was really a hands-on system, now you are just sitting behind the computer and pressing the buttons, but it can show you show much more and can put you right there. You feel less contained with this system, here I can fly you thought the solar system, through the galaxy, out of our galaxy and the gasps I get from people when they see our galaxy from the outside is just absolutely amazing. This is as close to real as we can take you, without putting you into space, which is of course not possible at the moment!'

Elsabé Uys, Planetarium Presenter, Iziko Planetarium, Cape Town

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ASTROGRAPHIC TELESCOPE BUILDING 1890, SAAO, OBSERVATORY, CAPE TOWN

BIG MOON # 2 (ASTROGRAPHIC TELESCOPE BUILDING 1890) SAAO OBSERVATORY, CAPE TOWN

‘A lot of interesting scientific discoveries were made there - the discovery of oxygen in stars for example.’

‘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, infrared astronomer and scientific historian

IAN GLASS, CEDERBERG ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY, CEDERBERG, WESTERN CAPE

So you think of stars, but dust and gas are also very important parts of the galaxies in the sky.’

‘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 study 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.’

IAN GLASS
Infrared astronomer and scientific historian

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MARWA'S CAVE, (FROM JAN RABIE'S "DIE HEMELBLOM" 1971), TRUITJIESKRAAL, CEDERBERG

‘One thing is for sure: this being is just as afraid as they are.’

'For real, that is not a shadow, but an upright being squeezed up against the edge. Kind of like a human form with two arms and legs, a narrow, oval face framed by a cap looking like a bare skull, clothed in a blue overall that they only had a glimpse of previously. Dead quiet. Francois lowers the torch, lifts it again. One thing is for sure: this being is just as afraid as they are.'

From Die Hemelblom (The Heavenly Flower) by Jan Rabie, 2nd edition 1974, Tafelberg, first published 1971.

Translated from the original Afrikaans by Nic Grobler.

MARWA'S CAVE, CEDERBERG, WESTERN CAPE

The first encounter with Marwa, the main alien character in Die Hemelblom takes place in a collapsed cave near the Cederberg - she hold hands with the humans to make it out alive.

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TRUITJIESKRAAL CAVES # 4, CEDERBERG

SAKKIE POTGIETER, PASTOR OF THE UNITED REFORMED CHURCH, CARNARVON, NORTHERN CAPE

‘Some people have this strange notion that there is a clash between religion and science. Especially when they come to a poor congregation, where the majority are poor people, they will think that they are perhaps creationist type of people - who reject science per se. That is not even close to the truth. In fact, I think we love science, we love to know more. We may have a certain interpretation of the wonders of creation, we believe in a creator, we believe that God not only created everything but that we are part of that creation and we want to really dispel the notion of science versus religion as always clashing. The Bible was never written with the intention of writing up a science handbook.’

DR. ISAK PORGIETER
Pastor

PULPIT, UNITED REFORMED CHURCH, CARNARVON, NORTHERN CAPE

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REVERSIBLE TRANSIT CIRCLE TELESCOPE # 1, SAAO OBSERVATORY, CAPE TOWN

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

‘In the beginning the natives from the planet Kazdan, the Hunters didn't trust the Neanites who were technologically advanced - almost seen as gods.’

‘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 ground 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