Look to the Sky

Backblip
A visit today to the Roque de los Muschachos, at 2460m the highest point on La Palma. It is here that almost 30 telescopes are located. We start off, blue hard hats on, at the Gran Telescopio Canarias, the world’s largest single aperture optical telescope (some extras). The precision engineering involved in it’s design, construction and operation is fascinating. Next we travel down to view the gamma ray telescopes, which search for chernikov light emitted when gamma rays (produced by extremely violent events such as the explosion of stars) hit the atmosphere (main image). We then had an opportunity to look through a solar telescope, viewing sunspots and solar flares, before finishing off at the visitor centre.
With Hawaii’s and Chile’s Atacama observatories La Palma is one of the best places to view the sky and the universe from Earth. The observatories here sit above the trade winds so there is very little atmospheric turbulence, the population is small, and strict laws limit light pollution at night.