Kai Petersen has some spectacular photos of La Palma at his website: http://www.lightpaintingfreaks.com/index.php?/albums/la-palma/ My favourites are the night photos with stars, but he also took this lovely photo of my and my friend Nevermore on a tour of the Observatory of the Roque de Los Muchachos. The website is in German, but you don’t need words to enjoy them. I really recommend a visit, because there are 37 more!
I’ve missed a lot of the Bajada one way and another, but we did get to the “God Save the Queen” concert last night. If you haven’t heard of them, they’re a Queen tribute group. We weren’t sure how good they were, but we bought tickets on the assuption that there’s a huge gap between “As good as the original Queen” and “Worth 15€.” Are they as good as…
Since I got there early, I got a chance to try to photograph the nearest star – our Sun, through a small telescope with a filter which lets through a wavelength called H? (pronounced H alpha). It was tricky. I’m pretty short sighted, and I can’t see well with my glasses squdged up against the viewfinder. For normal stargazing, I take my glasses off and refocus the telescope, but…
How about La Palma? It’s an incredibly photogenic and varied place, and the island council will even throw in some sweeteners.
Deep Dream is all over the internet lately, but for those of you who heaven’t come across it, Google have invented an ‘artificial neural network’ which finds patterns in images, and then matches them with other pictures stored in its memory. The result is seriously weird. I recently learned that some people suffer from a phobia of objects with irregular patterns of holes (Trypophobia) and they find some Deep…
It’s not quite a done deal, but it looks as though La Palma will be getting another 20 Chrenkov telescopes. The board of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) met on the 15th and 16th of July, and decided that their two preferred sitres are La Palma and Chile (near the Paranal observatory). Negotiations will now start with the site owners, and are expected to take 6 months. Meanwhile, they’ll…