When I first came to La Palma in 1990, around 40% of the population depended on the banana trade: growing bananas, packing them, or driving them. But even with the EU subsidy, it’s hard to make a living from bananas. If you’re unlucky with the weather, you can work hard all year and still make a loss. So the economy is diversifying, and a good thing too. But bananas are…
Realuminizing GTC’s tertiary mirror
Modern telescopes have mirrors made of a material called vitro ceramic, which keeps its size and shape in spite of changes in temperature, covered with a very thin layer of aluminium. Domestic mirrors have glass in front of the aluminium, to protect it, but that means that the light passes through the glass twice – coming and going – which degrades the image. So telescope mirrors have the aluminium…
Photographing GTC’s tertiary mirror
Yesterday the maintenance team took the tertiary mirror out of the huge GranTeCan telescope, and I was invited to take photos. (Starlight hits the huge primary mirror first, then bounces up to the smaller secondary mirror at the top of the telescope, then back down into a tube called the baffle to the flat tertiary at 45º, which sends it to the scientific instruments at the sides. The tertiary is elliptical, and…
The highest point of La Palma
Looking east towards Tenerife. The highest point of the island is the Roque de Los Muchachos, at 2,426m (8,000 ft) above sea level. Most days of the year, the view is spectacular. Even when it’s raining at sea-level, the summit is nearly always above the clouds. In fact, you can often look down on a sea of clouds surrounding the island. Of course that’s one reason why the observatory…
Diamond Ice on Mars
Sometimes it snows on Mars. In autumn, the snow is probably water ice, and in the depths of winter, when temperatures drop to -125 º C, it’s carbon dioxide snow. The atmosphere is thin and dry, and the temperature drops very fast after sunset, so the snow flakes are tiny, about 7 microns in diameter, like a human red blood cell. In fact, it’s a lot like the diamond ice…
La Palma’s got its Starlight certification
The Starlight Initiative has officially recognised La Palma as a “Starlight destination“, meaning that the island has really starry skies and really good activities for tourists to enjoy those skies. Among other things, the auditors were impressed by La Palma’s growing number of hiking trails and viewpoints used for astrotourism, its archaeological sites connected with astronomy, the progress towards a visitor centre at the Roque de Los Muchachos, and the country cottages…