A Breathtaking Window on the Universe: A guide to the observatory at the Roque de Los Muchachos
Today I sent my book off to the printers. It should be on sale in 3-4 weeks.
observatory
Canopus, the sacred star.
The bright star Canopus is too far south to see from the UK, but it can be seen from La Palma from late August to April. These are exactly the months when it might rain on La Palma. The British aren’t usually fond of rain, but the Canary Islands could do with more rain not less, and four months with no rain at all must have been a serious problem…
Happy Birthday to Gran Telescopio Canarias
Gran Telescopio Canarias (Big Canarian Telescope) also known as GranTeCan or GTC was inaugurated on July 24th 2009. It’s the largest optical an infrared telescope in the world, with a segmented main mirror 10.4 m acros which gathers as much light as four million human eyes. The top of the dome is 41 m above the ground. GTC is owned 5% by the university of Mexico, 5% by the university…
A birthday present for the William Herschel Telescope
The William Herschel Telescope is 25 years old today – first light was the 1st June 1987. For many years the Herschel was the biggest optical and infrared telescope in Europe, until Gran Telescopio Canarias opened in 2009. It’s main mirror is 4.2 m or 165? across which was huge when it opened, although that’s medium-sized these days. The telescope has so many different instruments that it’s been compared…
Inside the HARPS-N spectrograph
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,…
HARPS-N Inauguration
The HARPS-N spectrograph was inaugurated on April 23rd. Here’s some photos. This write up is better late than never, I hope.