This is one photo I didn’t take myself – I wish! As you probably guessed, it’s a NASA photo, taken from the Space Shuttle. If you want to see the high-resolution version, together with some text about the geology of La Palma, and how the image was taken, click here.
Two of the fourteen telescopes at the Roque de los Muchachos observatory are solar telescopes — highly specialised to observe our own sun. This is the Swedish Solar Telescope, which was the first telescope built on the Roque. It’s currently the best solar telescope in the world since they added the new adaptive optics in 2005. (Adaptive optics compensate for air turbulence.) It can resolve details of the sun’s surface…
I feel I’m crawling out from under an avalanche of paperwork. I’ve sent off my son’s passport application and collected his last Primary school report – and picked up a the official application for him to start High School. Now for the last seventeen years I’ve had plenty of practice speaking (mostly informal) Spanish, but very little practice writing it. And these forms are formal. My son even has to…
GranTeCan, the huge new Spanish telescope La Palma is home to one of the three most important astronomical observatories in the world. (The other two are Hawaii and the Atacama desert in Chile.) The observatory sits at the top of the island, at the Roque de los Muchachos. It’s a fascinating place to visit, but it’s not normally open to tourists – they’re too busy doing science. You can visit…
Galaxy M51 taken with the Isaac Newton Telescope and Wide Field Camera by Simon Driver. There’s a really simple reason why the Royal Greenwich Observatory moved their telescopes here. It’s one of the three best places in the world for astronomy. The observatory was founded in 1675 by Charles II of England – hence the “royal” for £520 (£20 over budget!). It was the first purpose-built scientific research facility…
This morning I took a party of kids around the Herschel Telescope. It was the first time for about 6 months, so I felt rusty, but it went fairly well. It really helped that the tech staff moved the dome and telescope for us. The bad part was that I’d forgotten how cold the wind can be up there, and I wasn’t dressed for it at all.