A Special Spectrograph.

The Telescopio Nazionale Galileo, late afternoon, Roque de Los Muchachos, La Palma
April 16, 2012

The Italian National Telescope (the Galileo) is getting a new scientific instrument to look for planets outside our solar system. I remember a childhood astronomy book which said that we would never know whether there are planets outside our own solar system, because they are much, much too small and much much much too far away. That’s all changed in the last few years. There’s a class of instruments called…

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Happy Birthday (part 2)

Wednesday was my son’s birthday. He’d already had the official party at the swimming pool, but for the day itself I took him and a bunch of his older cousins up to the Roque to see telescopes. I had hoped to show them the Herschel and maybe GranTeCan, but neither was possible. But I did manage to get them into the MAGIC telescope and then the Galileo.

September 5, 2007
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