Me, my dogs, my telescopes and the Kalahari

My name is Susan Young. I am a Zimbabwean. I live in South Africa. I am a writer. I spent the most glorious six years of my life with my dogs, Waldo and Rocket, and my telescope under the Kalahari’s pristine skies, star-gazing all night long, every night long.

Me and Waldo

My greatest passion in life is astronomy. Astronomy is a culmination of everything that matters to me. Beauty, curiosity, adventure, excitement, wonder, awe, the need to explore, wanting to know why the universe is organised like it is and how it’s evolving, the need to know where we came from and where we are going, and, of course, wanting to know if we are alone.

One can always look into the night sky and say with definitive certainty that the answers to those questions are out there, carried to us from the furthest reaches of the universe by that cosmic time traveler, light. We may never be able to translate the answers but it’s never worth not trying.

I used my 16″ f/4.5 Dobsonian to explore the Large Magellanic Cloud.

I can’t imagine life without my telescopes. I love them. The stars are my home. When I look up at the sky I know where I am in a cosmic sense. It’s not just some abstract romantic idea; it’s something very real to me. When I look through my telescope I have a very real sense of voyaging across the infinite space and time that is our home, seeing things more wonderful than one could think possible. Telescopes… science at one end. Beauty at the other. And everything in-between. That’s why I love my telescopes.

People often ask a stargazer what was their earliest and most memorable encounter with the night sky – a comet, a meteor shower, or their first glimpse of another planet in a telescope. When I was a little girl at Melsetter boarding school in then Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), we were woken up one night in October 1965 and taken out to see the great sun-grazing Comet Ikeya-Seki, which proved to be one of the brightest comets seen in the last thousand years, and is sometimes known as the Great Comet of 1965.

It was the most beautiful and awe-inspiring thing I had ever seen. The sight of it flying above the dark bulk of the Chimanimani Mountains is seared into my memory. And every time I look through my telescope I see other beautiful and awe-inspiring things. There is no end to them.

Waldo was the most faithful of little companions, and I loved that little chap with all my heart. He loved exploring the Kalahari by day, and by night slept at the base of my telescope, tucked up snugly in his little bed. But alas for the brevity of a dog’s life. After a few of the most glorious years together in the Kalahari, he departed for the stars. I buried him under a camelthorn tree and he is forever a part of the Kalahari… and my time in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Before Waldo departed he found a starving greyhound out in the depths of the Kalahari, whom the amazing vet in Kathu pulled back from the brink of extinction. Rocket, my gentle, noble, and intelligent companion… it is no wonder that for thousands of years these graceful hounds have been an object of fascination for artists, poets, kings, and pharaohs (Tutankhamen is known to have had greyhounds).

 Warming up in the morning sun after a night’s observing:

As with any star gazing experience, my journey around the Large Magellanic Cloud was intensely personal. It was not only an observational journey around a galaxy, but also a philosophic journey through time and space – I was left with the feeling that nothing is fixed or final or fully known… the Cloud, the universe, life itself… they are like a giant question mark that has no beginning and no end.