On on 5 and 6 June 2012, the planet Venus will pass in front of the sun in what’s called a transit. The last one took place in June 2004, and the next one won’t happen until December 2117. If you’re in the USA or Canada, the transit will be in progress at your sunset on June 5th. If you’re in the UK or Germany or North-east Spain, the transit will…
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,…
The HARPS-N spectrograph was inaugurated on April 23rd. Here’s some photos. This write up is better late than never, I hope.
Palacio Salazar in Santa Cruz de La Palma is hosting a great exhibition on the Earth and Mars until May 26th. It features lots of great photos of Mars, and explains the similarities and differences in geology, atmosphere and weather, and hydrology. Even better, they have a genuine meteorite from Mars. Did you know that a day on Mars lasts 24.6 hours compared to our 24? And the axial…
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…
Nine quirky SF stories by Sheila Crosby (the author of this blog) to entertain you. Two of the stories are set on La Palma. On sale April 23rd 2012, and available for Kindle, iPad, Mac and PCs. Cover painting by Merche Martin Morillo Layout by Eco-geek This book currently has 4.5 stars on Amazon.com, but it’s slightly cheaper from our own products page, which also offers other electronic formats. If…