The Parador on La Palma is just outside the village of San Jose, in Breña Baja. (Paradors are a national chain of posh hotels, and very nice they are too.) Tonight (April 22nd ) at 8 pm they’ll be hosting the first public dinner with a new menu, inspired by astronomical bodies. A professional Starlight guide will be there to talk about the planets, and afterwards, there will be stargazing….
The castle on the hill above Santa Cruz (to the north) gets its name from the five-yearly festival where they bring the statue of the Virgin Mary down from Las Nieves into Santa Cruz. It’s not much used in between fiestas, but Wednesday 20th April is The World Night in Defence of Starlight, and Astrotour will be holding a Star Party there from 9 pm to 1 am. You’ll be…
SPORT Children’s sport in the sport area, just outside the port of Santa Cruz, Tues, Wed, and Fri from 10 am – 2 pm Canoeing in the port, 9 am Thurs and Fri Aerobics in the Plaza España, 9 am Thurs and Fri Basketball in the sport area, just outside the port of Santa Cruz, 9 am Thurs and Fri Skatingin the sea front car park, 9 am Thurs and…
La Palma is home to one of the three most important astronomical observatories in the world. (The other two are Hawaii and the Atacama desert in Chile.) The observatory sits at the top of the island, at the Roque de los Muchachos. It’s a fascinating place to visit, but it’s not normally open to tourists – they’re too busy doing science. However, the IAC who run the site are organising…
M100 (NGC 4321), a barred galaxy in the Virgo cluster There’s a really simple reason why the Royal Greenwich Observatory moved their telescopes here. It’s one of the three best places in the world for astronomy. A modern telescope could see the equivalent of a candle on the moon, so obviously they want to be well away from city lights. Even more obviously, they want to be somewhere that doesn’t…
In all my 11 years of working at the Roque as a software engineer, I never visited the Nordic Optical Telescope. We used to joke that it was NOT one of ours. And in two years of tour guiding up there, I never went in either. It was NOT on my programme. But now I’m writing an e-book about the observatory, and it’s NOT a good idea to write about…