Friday night is the best meteor shower of the year, the Perseids. Of course it should be visible all over the planet, but La Palma’s astronomical viewpoints will probably be a particularly good place to see shooting stars. Unfotunately the full moon will spoil the show quite a bit. Astrotour will be in La Polvacera bsketball court from 9 pm – 11:30 pm with telescopes. This year, the island’s annual…
Tonight is the biggest meteor shower of the year, the Perseids. In Spanish, they’re called the tears of St Lawrence, because St Lawrence’s day is the 10th. Astrotour will be at La Polvacera basketball court. From 8 – 9 pm they’ll hold workshops and from 9pm to 11:30, observation with telescopes. If there’s low cloud, you’ll get a better view up at one of the astronomical viewpoints. Enjoy!
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 one of the first telescopes 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…
Mercury is the planet nearest to the sun. In fact, it’s so close that it whizzes around its orbit in just under 88 days. Because it’s closer to the sun than we are, we always see it close to the sun in the sky, making it difficult to observe. But tonight (Tuesday 19th July) it will be at its maximum distance, 27º away. Look for a small star in the…
STARMUS is a unique scientific, artistic and musical event taking place mostly in Tenerife this week, with a truly stellar line-up of speakers and performers. I wanted to go, but I couldn’t afford the time or the money. I say “mostly in Tenerife” because on Thursday Jack Szostak, Brian May, Richard Dawkins, Kip Thorne, George Smoot, Jill Tarter, Alexei Leonov and Neil Armstrong are coming to the Roque de los…
A Blood red eclipse of the moon from Llano de la Venta viewpoint La Palma has beautiful dark skies, so I was hoping for a really good view of last night’s lunar eclipse. But looking at the low cloud along the horizon, I decided to drive up to the star party at Llano de la Venta, one of La Palma’s astronomical viewpoints. In practice, an astronomical vciewpoint means parking space,…