Kimberley – The South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) is running a telescope naming competition for its new one-metre telescope, which is a recent addition to the collection of the many national and international telescopes at the observing plateau near Sutherland in the Northern Cape.
The competition is now open and will run until March 18 for pupils in Grades 6 to 12 countrywide.
Participants are encouraged to send their suggested names in any of the country’s 11 official languages, accompanied by a 60-word motivation, stating why their name should be considered.
“We are looking forward to the many exciting names that the pupils will come up with, as well as meeting the winner of the competition at the telescope naming ceremony in Sutherland,” said Dr Hannah Worters, an astronomer responsible for commissioning the new telescope.
The new telescope is the first South African optical telescope that will be remotely operable and potentially robotic, since the establishment of the SAAO observing location near Sutherland.
It will be capable of taking images of areas of the sky 70 times larger than the existing one-metre telescope.
It uses the SHOC (Sutherland High Speed Optical Camera), a very high-speed camera which can take 70 images in one second, to study rapid changes in star systems.
The telescope operations manager, Dr Ramotholo Sefako, said that it was important to share their excitement about the arrival of this new telescope with the rest of the country, by having it named by one of South Africa’s young pupils.
“We also hope everyone will be as delighted about it as we are. Hopefully, a few school pupils may end up being motivated enough to pursue careers in science in the future. The one-metre will also be a teaching telescope, mostly used by postgraduate astronomy students from South African universities to develop skills in observing, processing images taken with the telescope, where possible writing up results and publishing them in scientific journals, as well as acquiring technical expertise on aspects of operating a telescope,” he concluded.
Pupils wanting to enter the naming competition should include their full names, grade, name of their school and contact number in their entry and go to: http://www.saao.ac.za/competition/ or post their entry, to be received by March 18, to the South African Astronomical Observatory, PO Box 9, Observatory, 7935.
The winner and one parent or guardian will travel to Sutherland to attend the naming ceremony. The pupil’s name will be inscribed on a plaque attached to the building that houses the telescope.
After the ceremony, the winner will be shown around the facility and, if the weather permits, he or she will get a chance to observe the spectacular Sutherland night sky using the visitors’ telescopes.