A Breathtaking Window on the Universe: A guide to the observatory at the Roque de Los Muchachos
Today I sent my book off to the printers. It should be on sale in 3-4 weeks.
Roque de los Muchachos
Coffee
The residencia has a new coffee machine, which makes rather nice coffee. You buy a token from reception, put it in and press the button for your choice of coffee. Then you see the coffee pouring down the drain, swear, and grab a cup fast enough to catch the second half of the coffee. That’s right – no plastic cups. It’s better for the planet, and anyway I prefer drinking…
Happy Birthday to Gran Telescopio Canarias
Gran Telescopio Canarias (Big Canarian Telescope) also known as GranTeCan or GTC was inaugurated on July 24th 2009. It’s the largest optical an infrared telescope in the world, with a segmented main mirror 10.4 m acros which gathers as much light as four million human eyes. The top of the dome is 41 m above the ground. GTC is owned 5% by the university of Mexico, 5% by the university…
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…
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…