The residencia has a new coffee machine, which makes rather nice coffee. You buy a token from reception, put it in and press the button for your choice of coffee. Then you see the coffee pouring down the drain, swear, and grab a cup fast enough to catch the second half of the coffee. That’s right – no plastic cups. It’s better for the planet, and anyway I prefer drinking…
The Perseid Meteor Shower
The Perseids are usually the best meteor shower of the year. The peak will be on Sunday, with perhaps as many as 100 shooting stars per hour (although any meteor shower is best after midnight). In Spain, this shower is known as las lagrimas de San Lorenzo (the tears of St Lawrence) because it happens near the feast day of St. Lawrence the martyr. Fuencaliente town hall and island’s government…
The fire’s controlled
The forest fire in Mazo is under control, after burning 1,700 hectars. And this seems like a good moment to mention that Canary Pines are amazing survivors. They can burn for hours, and then only a few days after the autumn rains begin, the new shoots sprout straight out of the bark. It’s beautiful to see.
The fire’s controlled.
I woke up on Tuesday morning to find that it had rained. Not much, but apparently enough to really help with the fire. It’s controlled. The fire-fighting planes are off to help La Gomera. Yippee! I went off to work at the observatory much happier for that (and took this photo of clouds in the Caldera on the way down.) I’m nobody special to be saying it, but many, many…
Complete Success!
Curiosity is safely down on the surface of Mars, and sending NASA low resolution images. Everything worked perfectly. She can now get on with finding out if Mars was ever friendly for life. The nerds just took gold in the 560 billion metres. La curiosidad esta viva sobre la superficie de Marte, y envíando imágenes de baja resolución a la NASA. Todo funcionó a la perfección. Ahora puede seguir adelante…
Fiery night
I went up to Montaña las Breñas to see what was happening with the fire. A lot of other people evidently had the same idea – the car park was packed and the view wasn’t at all reassuring.