Two of the fourteen telescopes at the Roque de los Muchachos observatory are solar telescopes — highly specialised to observe our own sun. This is the Swedish Solar Telescope, which was the first telescope built on the Roque. It’s currently the best solar telescope in the world since they added the new adaptive optics in 2005. (Adaptive optics compensate for air turbulence.) It can resolve details of the sun’s surface…
The Sacred Heart fiesta in El Paso
It’s El Paso’s main fiesta, The Sacred Heart (El Corazon Sagrado). Like Mazo and San José, they make archways and carpets, but they’re slightly different. In San José, they dye the salt, and then put the colours together to make the picture. In El Paso, they start by putting down white salt –kilos and kilos of it from the salt pans in the southern tip of the island. They carefully…
A Short Story Competition
Fancy £200 AND having your short story collection published as an ebook and paperback? Alfie Dog has a competition for: The story submitted must be between 1000 and 2000 words excluding title and can be in any genre that is normally carried by Alfie Dog Fiction (see site for details). It should not contain any unnecessary profanity or blasphemy. Please note we do not carry erotica or extreme violence. Open…
Visiting the observatory 2014
La Palma is home to one of the three most important astronomical observatories in the world. (The other two are Hawaii and the Atacama desert in Chile.) The observatory sits at the top of the island, at the Roque de los Muchachos. It’s a fascinating place to visit, but it’s not normally open to tourists – they’re too busy doing science. However, you can sign up for a 90 minutes…
Corpus Christi in San Jose
The village of San José celebrates Corpus Christi on the Sunday after Mazo. Traditionally, the carpets are made out of dyed sea-salt, although lately some groups use petals, leaves and seeds as the do in Mazo. This was my favourite carpet, although it’s hard to chose.
Summer Solstice 2014
Today is the summer solstice – the longest day of the year. Several archeological sites on La Palma mark the solstice. El Verde, near El Paso cemetery, is a natural bowl where a natural notch in the rock sends a spotlight onto a carving at midsummer sunset. This was probably a sacred moment for the Awara. If you’d like to see it, get to the car park at El Paso…