Curiosity, also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, will touch down on Mars at 6:31 (BST or La Palma local time). I hope it won’t crash into Mars hard enough to create a new impact crater. Mars is currently on the opposite side of the sun to Earth, and radio signals from Mars take 14 minutes to reach Earth. That’s far too long for the engineers at NASA to…
On Wednesday August 1st there will be free astronomical activities in Puntallana. At 4:30 pm you’ll have the chance to see the sun safely outside the Casa de Cultura. At 6 pm there’s a talk in planets inside the Casa de Cultura. And at 9:30 pm there’s a chance too see stars at the Salto de Enamorado viewpoint (near San Bartomome’s church.) Come and have fun!
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…
Sally Ride, the first American astronaut, died today at the young age of 62. She is survived by her partner of 27 years, Tam E. O’Shaughnessy.
This morning, the moon, Jupiter and Venus lay close together in the east. This photo was taken with a compact camera from Llano de La Venta viewpoint, one of the astronomical viewpoints on La Palma.
You must have noticed that the physicists have been jumping up and down lately, because the Large Hadron Collider has discovered the Higgs boson, nicknamed the God particle. I’m not a particle physicist. I’m not at all clear about how the Higgs boson creates the Higgs field and gives everything mass. Here’s the bit I’m clear about. The human brain evolved to hunt antelopes on the Serrengeti. Quantum physics is…