South African Astronomical Observatory
Trophies in Sutherland

The South African Astronomical Observatory is the National Facility for optical/infrared astronomy in South Africa.

He also estimated (from observations of Jupiter’s moons) that Cape Town was nearly 300 km west of its position on his maps of the Earth. When the Reverend Fearon Fallows arrived at the Cape, he found himself landed in the wrong place (Simon’s Town) and with no way of getting his cargo of astronomical instruments to Cape Town except by putting them on another ship at his own expense. Though intended as a first rough effort, Fallows’ positions for southern stars were at least as good as any others readily available at the time. Moving one of the large stones needed for the instrument peers at the Royal Observatory. Thirty tons of lead for the roof had to be moved over bad roads to the new building, as well as huge stones for mounting the permanent instruments. After only three years in residence, he died of recurrent scarlet fever and overwork. Two observers were often necessary to get results with the instruments of Fallows’ day, but Fallows had great difficulty getting even one reliable assistant. We are observing it.’) places her first on the roll of South African women observers in this field by more than a century. Fallows’ successor Thomas Henderson had difficulties with smaller, scalier creatures. The Airy transit circle was installed at the Cape in But his most remarkable achievement was to make the first observations from which the distance of a star (other than the Sun) could be calculated. Quite naturally it was Maclear who did the calculations necessary to produce accurate geographical positions from Livingstone’s observations. Leopards and Bushmen provided occasional unexpected excitement. At the end of ten years of effort and hardship, Maclear and his assistants had not only established the true shape of the southern hemisphere of the Earth, but had made the first accurate geodetic surveys of South Africa, extending hundreds of kilometers inland. A leading British astronomer kept his copy of Gill’s photograph mounted in his dining room window for the rest of his life, and a visitor who saw it offered Gill his first professional post in astronomy. Mapping the sky had always meant measuring star positions one by one. Pioneering efforts at recording the appearance of the Great Comet of 1882 were made with the aid of a local photographer and his portrait lens. To end uncertainty about the distance of the Sun, Gill led an international effort to measure the exact positions of three asteroids (minor planets) as seen from different parts of the Earth. When he left, the observatory was investigating the physical nature of stars with large modern (1901) refractors. Early work with the spectroscope at the Cape identified silicon, oxygen and europium in stars, while a somewhat more eccentric publication described an analysis of the elements found in lead pencils. For decades, accurate positions for southern stars depended mainly on this one instrument. The motions of tens of thousands of stars were measured, and the distances to over 1600 nearby stars. From left: Filming the Cape Town noon gun, fired by electrical signals from the observatory since the 1860s. Headquarters are in the old Royal Observatory buildings in Cape Town.