Casa Lujan is much more fun than you’d expect from the brochures, which describe it as an “ethnographic museum”. But it’s not a collection of stuff in dusty display cases. It’s an 18th century house, with whole rooms restored to show how the comfortably-off lived between about 1920 and 1960. Even better, there are people “living” in the house. And rather than…
Dragon Trees
The north of La Palma is one of the best places to see dragon trees. These exotic-looking plants grow throughout the Canary Islands, and also in Cape Verde, the Azores, Maderia, and western Morocco, but on La Palma, they’re still reproducing naturally. The Canary Islands used to have a large, flightless bird, something like a Dodo. This bird ate dragon tree fruits, so the seeds evolved to have a hard protective…
Biking through Paradise
Here’s a wonderful video of mountain biking on La Palma. Of course, if biking’s not your thing, you hiking through the same stunning scenery.
I got a Buzz from Buzz Trips
I enjoy tour guiding. If I’m honest, I like the sound of my own voice, but I also like to share my enthusiasm for astronomy and La Palma, and I love to see people go away happy. I like it even more when they tell the world about it, like Buzz Trips blog just did.Actually, Buzz Trips looks like a great blog. I’ll have to keep reading it.
Canopus, the sacred star.
The bright star Canopus is too far south to see from the UK, but it can be seen from La Palma from late August to April. These are exactly the months when it might rain on La Palma. The British aren’t usually fond of rain, but the Canary Islands could do with more rain not less, and four months with no rain at all must have been a serious problem…
Photography Trip
From left to right: Liverpool Telescope, Isaac Newton Telescope, Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope,William Hershel Telescope (with laser guide star) Swedish Solar Telescope, Dutch Open Telescope. At the front, MAGIC I.The very bright star is actually Venus. I got permission to take photographs of the observatory early this morning. I’d carefully planned it so that the full moon would be setting, illuminating the telescopes for me, and I hoped to get the…