I’m not sure what I was thinking of when I agreed to work from Monday to Friday this week. I let myself slip way behind with paperwork and now I have to catch up. Besides, I’m self employed and the new year means setting up new spreadsheets. It’s not as if any of these jobs are particularly long or difficult, just that there’s a lot of them. Also my cleaner…
The digger’s started wotk on the foundations for the Large Size Telescope I gather the plan is to dig down 3 m, which is less than I’d thought for such a big structure. But the the MAGIC telescope is very light for its size, so perhaps the LST will be too. Cross posted to http://lapalma-island.com
Today I was doing my talk on the heliport, and this butterfly landed on a guest’s T shirt. I think it thought it was a flower. You can see the butterfly’s long tongue, looking for nectar.
I had to get up early today to work at the observatory. The two visits went well, although I had to modify the second one because the telescope was taking delivery of a new scientific instrument called EMIR. EMIR is huge and it weighs 5 tonnes, and I was quite excited to see it. I was also pleased to see the project manager briefly, because I’ve known her for 25…
I slept badly on Wednesday night, so I wasn’t in the mood for a long excursion on Thursday, but I really enjoyed it. As we ate our picnic lunch we could see the snow on the peaks. Sure enough, there was pletny of snow still up there, although it was really warm, about 15 ºC. We stopped first beside the MAGIC telescope for a photo opportunity, and I couldn’t resist…
Two days ago the top of La Palma was covered in fog and it was cold – just 6 ºC. Today we were back to a cloudless blue sky, brilliant sunshine and about 18 ºC. Much nicer! Today’s visitors were an international bunch: teenagers from Los Sauces on La Palma, The Czech Republic and Greece. I gave the tour in English and made it as simple as possible. But no…