The 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics has been awarded to the Supernova Cosmology Project, which used distant supernova to measure the expansion of the universe, and prove that the expansion is accelerating. The Supernova Cosmology Project was a big job, and it has 32 co-authors, including M. Pilar Ruiz Lapuente from the University of Barcelona, who contributed observations from the William Herschel Telescope and the Isaac Newton Telescope, both at…
La Palma now has 25 businesses that specialise in astrotourism to some degree. (It’s not surprising: all you have to do is look up on a cloudless night to see why) These businesses got together between November 24th and 30th to swap ideas on how to help each other give tourists a good time. There were talks and excursions to restaurants that offer stargazing with…
Most of La Palma has good weather nearly all year. But the observatory is up at 2400 m (almost 8,000 ft) and occasionally in winter dramatic storms come howling in, dump half a metre of snow overnight, and disappear almost as fast as they came. If you’re planning a trip to the observatory between November and March, be sure to check the road conditions before you leave. You can…
The first ever artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, was launched by the Russians on October 4th, 1957. It weighed just 83.6 kg (184.3 lb) (less than me, I’m sorry to say) compared to the International Space Station which weighs 450 tonnes (rather more than I do.) Sputnik 1 had a very elliptical orbit, taking 96 minutes to complete one orbit, which means that it averaged a little higher than the…
The big telescopes at the observatory at the Roque de Los Muchachos mostly use mirrors rather than lenses. Domestic mirrors have the aluminium behind glass to protect it, but astronomical mirrors have the aluminium on top. This gives the best image, but it also means that the aluminium slowly spoils, and has to be replaced every three years or so. This is not a simple operation. The aluminium layer is…
GranTeCan is the biggest optical telescope in the world, and it’s hard to convey the sheer size of it in a photograph. The telescope itself weighs 485 tonnes. You could fit an tennis court inside the dome, and the top of the dome is 41 m above the ground. But you can’t see any of that in a photograph. Luckily for me, the engineers did some maintenance on the massive…