Four weekends a year with the lights off

A dark-sky weekend on a working sheep farm on the Komsberg escarpment, 1 580 m up and 71 km from the nearest streetlight.

Ask for a place

Where

Rietkuil, a working sheep farm on the Komsberg escarpment, Northern Cape.

Off the R354 between Matjiesfontein and Sutherland, then 18 km of district gravel. Any car manages it dry. After rain, bring clearance.

S 32.71 E 20.57, 1 580 m. Sutherland is 71 km away and it is the nearest streetlight.

When

Four new-moon weekends a year: 13 to 15 March, 5 to 7 June, 4 to 6 September, 27 to 29 November.

Gate opens Friday 14h00. Observing runs Friday and Saturday from about 19h30. Everyone is off the farm by 11h00 on Sunday.

The cloud call is made at noon on the Friday. If it is going to be covered we move you to the next weekend rather than run it anyway.

Why this plateau and not somewhere closer

The Roggeveld is high, dry and empty, which is exactly why the observatory sits at Sutherland an hour up the road. We are on the same plateau, right on the escarpment edge, and the light dome from town sits low behind the koppie instead of in front of you. The numbers that matter are 1 580 m, winter humidity under thirty percent, and a meter reading that comes in at Bortle 2 on a good night. What that means standing on the werf is that the Milky Way is bright enough to throw a shadow, and in June you can read a headline by it. The trade is honest. It is cold, and minus six on the June weekend is normal. The wind comes over the edge hard enough that we set the scopes up behind the shearing shed. We have not found anywhere darker within four hours of Cape Town.

How a night runs

17h40 — Sunset from the escarpment edge, ten minutes walk from the werf. Bring the jacket you think is too warm.
18h30 — Supper in the shearing shed, one long table, one sitting. This is where people meet each other.
19h30 — White light off. Red torches only, and phones face down until sunrise.
20h00 — The naked-eye tour: Crux and the Pointers, both Magellanic Clouds, the dark lanes of the Coalsack. Forty minutes, no equipment needed.
21h30 — Four scopes out on the werf, two of them ours. Omega Centauri, the Jewel Box, Saturn when it is up. Nobody queues more than a minute.
01h00 — Soup, then the faint list for whoever is still standing: Sculptor, the Tarantula, and anything you asked us to find. We pack up when the last person does.

Who is on the farm with you

Four of us, twenty-six guests at most. Three at the eyepieces, one at the fire, and all four awake until the last person goes to bed.

Marlize BothmaFarmer and host

Fourth generation on Rietkuil. She runs the sheep, the water and the bookings, and she is the one who decides at noon on the Friday whether the sky is worth your petrol.

Sipho NdabaObserving guide

Ten years volunteering at the Johannesburg Observatory before he moved down here. He is the one who finds the thing you have read about for years and never actually seen.

Anton KrielAstrophotography

Brings the tracking mount and the spare cameras. Arrive with a DSLR and no idea what to do with it and you will leave with a Milky Way frame you took yourself.