Well that was an interesting talk. There have been no massive asteroid impacts in living memory, so it’s easy to forget that they exist. The scientists are pretty confident they’re tracking 96% everything over a kilometre in diameter. Those happen just once every 700,000 years, which is good because they hit with the equivalent of 60,000 million tons of TNT. The worry is the smaller ones. A 40m-wide asteroid…
Asteroid Day – free event
Asteroid Day is the anniversary of the Tunguska event in 1908, when a huge asteroid exploded over Siberia. There will be a free public event on Tuesday 30th of June at 19:00 at Palacio Salazar in Santa Cruz de La Palma. SCHEDULE: 19:00 – Welcome & keynote lecture 19:10 – Talks given by astronomers Speakers: Elena Nordio (Ad Astra La Palma) Vania Lorenzi (Telescopio Nazionale Galileo) Massimo Cecconi (Telescopio…
Izaña and Las Cañadas
Today we drove from Puerto de la Cruz over the top of Tenerife, down to Los Cristianos to catch the ferry home. I took the chance to detour past the Izaña observatory, although the public aren’t allowed inside. Like La Palma, the trade winds create excellent observing conditions on the windward side of Tenerife. The observatory is above the clouds, where the air is very clean and dry, and…
EWASS
Well we didn’t sell many books, but it was an interesting experience and it got my name out there a bit. I’m glad we went.
Philae woke up!
Remember Rosetta, the spaceship orbiting a comet and the lander that bounced into the shade? The lander wasn’t getting enough sunlight to power it, so it went into hibernation in November last year. Now that the comet is nearer the sun there’s more light, plus the comet’s evaporating away and the valley’s less deep now. Philae’s woken up, and ESA are hoping to get their mitts on all that…
¡La segunga edición en español ha llegado!
Una espectacular ventana al universo: guía del observatorio astrofisico del Roque de los Muchachos por Sheila M. Crosby Texto en español corrigido por Anjara Rodríguez Hernández (Libro en rustica de no ficción, 148 páginas, A5) Bienvenido al Roque de Los Muchachos, donde 15 telescopios de 19 países aprovechan al máximo el mejor cielo nocturno de Europa para explorar el cosmos. Descubre lo que se siente al trabajar en este…