so close to the stars

José De Queiroz (68) says “This is our cathedral” and opens the door. Gray carpet, concrete walls. Wooden gable roof. The room is almost empty except for four telescopes. Three are tall and slender, and the fourth is as strong as an adult bull. Focal length: nine meters. Here, in the middle of the Graubünden mountains, is Switzerland’s largest public telescope.

Marco Sutter (60) presses the button next to the door. He and De Queiroz run the Mirasteilas Observatory in Falera, where they monitor orbits and detect asteroids. The inconspicuous hut is located a little above the village, right next to the children’s cable car. You can hear the sound of the snowmobile crawling on the snow-covered slope with a loud beep up to the Observatory.

The wooden ceiling reveals a meter-by-meter view of the shimmering night sky, humming above our heads. Cold mountain air is blowing around your ears. Stargazers Cathedral has a sliding roof.

orbit explodes

“Look, here’s Jupiter,” Sutter says, pointing to a bright spot. Concrete walls block out the picturesque mountain panorama that draws many tourists to Falera – none of that matters if you want to explore what’s up above. This ancient, gigantic cosmos of which we are a small part.

Just as we think about last year at New Year’s, the universe makes us think: Who are we and why? Whats in there? We discovered continents, we decoded genomes. We only know about five percent of space. One of the last barely discovered adventures awaits there.

Man’s purpose has always been to discover it, to satisfy our almost irresistible curiosity. But never as urgent as it is today. Last summer, the James Webb telescope delivered incredibly impressive images of distant galaxies – a technical sensation. Despite the economic crisis, NASA’s 2022 budget was around US$24 billion.

Alongside China and Russia, another player is targeting the space scene, and Europe is doing pretty well this time around. Private billionaires like Elon Musk (51) occupy as many orbits as possible. Today’s space race is no longer just a matter of prestige. It’s about securing resources.

Falera has been the center of astronomy since the Bronze Age.

Space exploration at Mirasteilas observatory doesn’t need billions. The muscular reflecting telescope still cost a quarter of a million Swiss francs. De Queiroz takes the iPad from the charging station and opens a planetarium app. Star map.

It touches one of the dots. Eyes immediately turn to the fifth and largest planet in our solar system. It’s eleven times the size of Earth, about 600 million kilometers away from us. Jupiter. In the reflecting telescope, the milky dot turns into a marble with red and white stripes. De Queiroz explains the structure of the gigantic gas planet: “This is its colorful cloud cover.”

He came to the mountain village for hotel business in the 1970s and today runs the Encarna restaurant. He has to deal with people so often at his job that he misses the quiet after work. He took binoculars and sat on the balcony of his restaurant. “At first, people thought I was crazy,” he says with a laugh. They named him Stargazer. In Romansh: Mirasteilas.

“Our body gets smaller, our soul gets bigger”

At the turn of the millennium, De Queiroz began organizing the Telescope Meeting. Astronomy enthusiasts from all over Europe soon made a pilgrimage to Falera to research and exchange news together. Because the orbit is not rigid, it is dynamic. There’s always something going on. This was followed by the Planetary Path in Falera, an astronomical education path throughout our solar system. With the sponsorship and support of the community, the Mirasteilas Foundation finally built the observatory in 2006.

De Queiroz is proud that Falera is now an astronomy center of international importance. Because 3000 years ago the cosmos played an important role in the mountain village. De Queiroz marks the other end of the village. “During the Bronze Age, people built long rows of stones here to record astronomical events like the summer solstice.” The so-called megaliths can still be found today in Parc La Mutta, the largest astronomical cult site in Switzerland.

The observatory became De Queiroz’s second home. Here he can slow down, think about things that have no place in everyday life. “Our bodies are getting smaller and our minds are getting bigger in the face of this huge universe,” he says, his eyes shining.

De Queiroz discovered three asteroids

A glowing ball of fire pierces the darkness. De Queiroz follows him with two fingers for a second, until his tail sticks out. On the computer screen, a meteor entered the earth’s atmosphere and became so hot due to friction that it burned. A shooting star. De Queiroz sits in the control room right next to Stargazer Cathedral. From the small room he watches the space for the American Minor Planet Center (MPC).

Around 900 people worldwide have permission for what De Queiroz does: astrometry, the measurement of celestial bodies. In addition to meteors, it also observes much larger asteroids, calculates their orbits and records any irregularities. Because colliding with the world can be dangerous. In a successful test run last year, NASA launched a probe into an asteroid for the first time to deflect it.

233943. This is the number that marks the most important event in De Queiroz’s life after the birth of his daughter. He was in this room in 2009 when an unnamed potato buzzed on his screen. “Actually every celestial body in space is described in detail,” says De Queiroz, who is still enthusiastic today. He had discovered an asteroid. He named it Falera after enumeration and discovered two more: Chur and Marcia, named after his daughter.

a passion that binds

A cloud moves in the night sky, blocking the red and white marble. Sutter looks up from the telescope. In his basement training room, he introduces groups of visitors to astronomy and tells them what we can discover from our Milky Way. For example, our neighboring galaxy Andromeda. 2.5 million light years away. So the light we see is 2.5 million years old.

Sutter looks up one last time. In winter the sky is dominated by galaxies, in summer the Milky Way seems to rise from the mountains of Graubünden. On the ski slope, which is a normal meadow at summer nights, hundreds of telescopes reach into the sky at telescope meetings. The Swiss Astronomical Society has around 2,500 members, including 32 regional associations and associations. “Astronomy connects,” Sutter says.

He and De Queiroz met many like-minded people at the observatory. Today the team consists of 30 volunteer demonstrators from the Astronomical Society of Graubünden. They want to convey their enthusiasm on public tours. “Astronomy should be part of general education,” Sutter says. Presses the button. The twinkling dome of stars buzz over its cathedral.