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…
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),…
The Italian National Telescope (the Galileo) is getting a new scientific instrument to look for planets outside our solar system. I remember a childhood astronomy book which said that we would never know whether there are planets outside our own solar system, because they are much, much too small and much much much too far away. That’s all changed in the last few years. There’s a class of instruments called…
This is the cover design for my ebook, “A Breathtaking Window on the Universe: a guide to the Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory”, which should be on sale by late summer or autumn of 2012. It explains why the observatory is on La Palma and how a telescope and its instruments work, and gives details of each telescope, plus many anecdotes and over 60 photos. I’ll be posting full details…
There is a new astronomical viewpoint above Mazo at Las Toscas. Like the others, it has parking space, level ground suitable for tripods, a signpost pointing to the pole star, and an information panel. This one has information about noctural wildlife on La Palma: bats, owls and crickets. It’s well away from street lights, although it does give a great view down to the island’s airport. To get there,…