Full Resolution After dinner, we head about 300 meters down the road to SAAO. The main observatory building (with the columns) was built in 1829! There's a long history of science done here, including a lot of early work in stellar parallax. The large telescopes from Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Pretoria were moved to the new dark site in Sutherland (4 hours to the NE) in the 1970s. I suppose by setting telescopes on the observatory grounds, we are rekindling the historic age of Cape-based South African astronomy!
