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…
Most of the snow has melted, and the road from Santa Cruz to the observatory is open again. But there’s a landslide blocking half the road above the treeline, somewhere near the rock formation that looks like a red submarine.
La Palma has a lovely sub-tropical climate. It’s called the land of eternal spring. But today the top of the mountain is covered with snow. Of course, we only ever get snow at high altitude, and these days, we don’t get snow every winter. But when it snows, it can dump several feet in one night. The Roque is one of the three best sites in the world for…
A small asteroid, some 3 metres in diameter, came screaming in at 12 km /s (27,000 mph) and exploded over northern Sudan at 2:45 am on Tuesday October 7th. They don’t think any of the bits would have been big enough to hit the ground. This is the first time an asteroid has been spotted and tracked before impact. And the reason it’s on this blog is that the William…
No, not the Princess hotel, although I’ve heard that’s very nice. Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn from Thailand visited La Palma on Monday, and stayed the night. In the morning, she inaugurated the Siam Park in Tenerife, which will be the biggest aquatic theme park in Europe when in opens. Then she came to La Palma and visited the observatory, where she visited the huge new Spanish telescope GranTeCan (Gran Telescopio…
Florien was the project manager for MAGIC II, the second of the huge Cherenkov telescopes at the Roque de los Muchachos. The telescope was due to be inaugurated next week, on the 19th. That’s been delayed now, because somehow he fell from the prime focus tower in the dark last night. The tower is about ten metres (33ft) high, and Florien’s dead. I only ever had one conversation with him….