Traditionally, the observatory has been open to visitors about 4 days per year, with perhaps 6 groups for each day. This year, they’re going to have 20 open days, but most of them will only have one group. Each visit starts at 9:45 with a visit to the MAGIC gamma-ray telescope, followed by one other telescope, and finishes before 12.00. DATE Day 2nd telescope 8th July Tues WHT or INT…
My friends in Franceses have amateur telescopes, and my friend in Puntagorda usually has cloudless summer nights with no street lights nearby. So we finally put the two together. The catch is that it meant camping, because the house in Puntagorda is tiny, but that made a change. It’s almost a year since I’ve been camping, partly because the previous exhibition wasn’t a success. (See Sleeping With My Best Friend’s…
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…
Well I’ve been invited to leave the island for supporting a non-approved football team. Somebody calling him/herself “The voice of the Awara” emailed their list and said “We invite all foreigners who shout ‘Spain!’ to pack their cases and leave for the Peninsular.” Nobody I’ve asked knows who this person is, much less remembers electing them as the island’s spokesperson. Most of them support the national team too. I’ve had…
We’re a very happy place this Monday morning. For anyone who hasn’t heard, Spain won European Championship last night, for the first time in 44 years. From my window I can see four people at the bus stop opposite, waiting to go to work as usual. But today they have their arms around each other, jumping up and down with the people at the end punching the air, chanting, “¡España!…