Roque de los Muchachos

A birthday present for the William Herschel Telescope

The William Herschel Telescope at sunset, Roque de los Muchachos observatory
June 1, 2012
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  The William Herschel Telescope is 25 years old today – first light was the 1st June 1987. For many years the Herschel was the biggest optical and infrared telescope in Europe, until Gran Telescopio Canarias opened in 2009. It’s main mirror is 4.2 m or 165? across which was huge when it opened, although that’s medium-sized these days. The telescope has so many different instruments that it’s been compared…

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Inside the HARPS-N spectrograph

The big defraction grating on its zerodur support, HARPS-N spectrograph, Galileo telescope
May 21, 2012
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  Francesco Pepe invited me to see inside the HARPS spectrograph. I was very lucky, because the enclosure was closed for the inauguration, and closed again (probably for years) soon after I took these photos. Of course I had to wear special over-clothes to prevent dust getting into the instrument. The top photo shows the grating, which splits the starlight into a rainbow, and the bottom one shows the collimator,…

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Inauguration of the Liverpool Annex

The Liverpool Telescope, open at sunset, Roque de Los Muchachos observatory
May 3, 2012
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  Today they inaugurated the annex building to the Liverpool telescope. The Liverpool is the joint largest robotic telescope in the world, with a 2 m mirror. Since there’s nobody at the telescope at night, it was built with very little in the way of workshops. But the new building contains a workshop to assemble and test new instruments, and a control room, to help humans commission them. Of course…

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News

On Sunday, Alan Gandy successfully completed his Seven-Islands Walk. (If you’re impressed, you can donate here.) Tuesday May 1st is a public holiday. Most shops will be closed. If you’re self catering, it might be an idea to stock up a bit today. Thursday May 3rd is a local holiday in Santa Cruz de La Palma, Breña Alta, Breña Baja and Mazo. It’s Fiesta de la Cruz, and the roadside…

April 30, 2012
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Starry Skies over La Palma

The Roque at night by Manel Soria
April 19, 2012
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Manel Soria, who gave a talk on night photography at FotoNature 2012 now has amazing photos of La Palma on his website at www.frikosal.net The photo above was taken in the observatory, looking north. From left to right you can see the empty dome of the Swedish 60 cm telescope, MAGIC II (on the horizon, some distance below), the Superwasp Follow-up Telescope (closer), the Liverpool telescope (peeking from behind the ridge),…

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