Well squee! NASA announced that the little star TRAPPIST-1 has 7 rocky planets, ranging in size from 40% to 140% of Earth’s mass. They’re all very close to the star, closer than Mercury is to our own Sun, but TRAPPIST-1 is an ultracool dwarf star, with a surface temperature of perhaps 2,500 ºC. Our sun is about 5,500 ºC. This means that several of the planets are in the Goldilocks…
I’m not sure what I was thinking of when I agreed to work from Monday to Friday this week. I let myself slip way behind with paperwork and now I have to catch up. Besides, I’m self employed and the new year means setting up new spreadsheets. It’s not as if any of these jobs are particularly long or difficult, just that there’s a lot of them. Also my cleaner…
The digger’s started wotk on the foundations for the Large Size Telescope I gather the plan is to dig down 3 m, which is less than I’d thought for such a big structure. But the the MAGIC telescope is very light for its size, so perhaps the LST will be too. Cross posted to http://lapalma-island.com
Today I was doing my talk on the heliport, and this butterfly landed on a guest’s T shirt. I think it thought it was a flower. You can see the butterfly’s long tongue, looking for nectar.
Work has finally started on the Large Size Telescope. The first stone ceremony was held on October 9th. This week the bushes have been cut down ready for the bulldozers to move in. Like the MAGIC, the LST will be a huge Cherenkov telescope (looking for gamma rays from space) with a mirror 23m across. The larger mirror will enable it to see fainter Cherenkov light, and therefore lower energy particles….
I had to get up early today to work at the observatory. The two visits went well, although I had to modify the second one because the telescope was taking delivery of a new scientific instrument called EMIR. EMIR is huge and it weighs 5 tonnes, and I was quite excited to see it. I was also pleased to see the project manager briefly, because I’ve known her for 25…