Manel Soria, who gave a talk on night photography at FotoNature 2012 now has amazing photos of La Palma on his website at www.frikosal.net The photo above was taken in the observatory, looking north. From left to right you can see the empty dome of the Swedish 60 cm telescope, MAGIC II (on the horizon, some distance below), the Superwasp Follow-up Telescope (closer), the Liverpool telescope (peeking from behind the ridge),…
Putting the Galileo’s mirror onto the carrying case, which is on the lorry. I didn’t have any guiding work yesterday, but I drove up the mountain anyway. I wanted to get photos of people moving the main mirror from the Galileo to the Herschel telescope for realuminizing. They only do this once every three years, so I was keen not to miss it. That mirror weighs about 6 tonnes, and…
Me and the Superwasp follow-up telescope. Last night I went up to the Roque to photograph telescopes at sunset. The time rather snuck up on me, so I left in a hurry and a bad mood, worried that I’d drive up (200 hairpin bends and about 75 minutes each way) and not get any photos after all. As it turned out, I got arrived with about five minutes to spare….
A Blood red eclipse of the moon from Llano de la Venta viewpoint La Palma has beautiful dark skies, so I was hoping for a really good view of last night’s lunar eclipse. But looking at the low cloud along the horizon, I decided to drive up to the star party at Llano de la Venta, one of La Palma’s astronomical viewpoints. In practice, an astronomical vciewpoint means parking space,…
Last night I went to La Punta in Tijarafe, to get some photos of the fiesta. It’s not a big fiesta but I’ve been going cross-eyed with the current translation, and I really, really needed a break in my routine. Besides, in 18 years of living on La Palma, I’d never been to La Punta. Since the procession was going to be quite late, I made sure I had the…
I just discovered http://photosthatchangedtheworld.com/, which features memorable news photos. Some of them I remember seeing before. Some are very upsetting, but all are worth seeing. I hadn’t heard of Emmett Till before. As a 14-year-old he went from Chicago to visit relatives in Mississippi, and while he was there he whistled at a shop girl. He was black. She was white. This was 1955. Three days later, two men took…