A group of bright young sparks working as telescope operators in Cape Town consider themselves very lucky. They sit in a control room in Pinelands to which the first signals coming out of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope in the Karoo are relayed.Around the clock they record data, which until now has been tucked away in the endless dark matter of the skies."We are the first line of support. If anything goes wrong we are the first to know about it because we are here 24/7," said Anele Nzama, a computer engineer from KwaZulu-Natal."We are a team of six and monitor the health of the telescopes."Her colleague, Siyambonga Matshawule, said the thrill of astronomy is that "the universe is our laboratory".Born in rural Lady Frere, in Eastern Cape, Matshawule attended a farm school but became the first in his family to get a university education."There are so many unanswered questions so when I come here each day I wonder what we are looking at that will eventually teach us about our universe," Matshawule said."We are looking into the galaxies and the stars; we are mapping the universe."For intern Tshenolo Daumas it is all about the telescopes.She graduated with a BSc in mathematics from the University of Johannesburg but became depressed towards the end of her degree course because she felt her love of numbers would not take her anywhere."I hadn't paired it with physics or engineering. It was strictly maths - my aunt described it as a 'naked' degree."But when she got an internship at SKA she knew she would be on a learning curve as sharp as some of the graphs in front of her.It hasn't been a disappointment...