Observing at La Palma

I spent Monday night "observing" which turned out, thanks to the weather, to mean playing on my laptop all night. But we did get to go and have a look around some of the other telescopes beforehand. First was the William Herschel Telescope.

Outside the WHT

The primary/biggest mirror is 4.2m. The little mirror at the top is 1m across. The photos really need a little person for scale.

William Herschel telescope.

The telescope weights 79513 kg and the mounting for it weighs 186,250 kg. Not light things. And it is mounted on top of a 3 story building. I tried not looking down.

Not for those with vertigo.

You have to be careful where you go! Because the telescope rotates, there are regular gates that don't lead to anything but a long fall if you aren't careful.

gate to no where

And who said astronomy had cutting edge, state of the art technology? It might have done in the 80s. But we still use it. Waste not, want not.

Some of the equipment is very high tech

They all have a kitchen (which is very appreciated) and often a sitting area and library. This was hanging in the WHT library. They are very proud of it.

Brain May likes it here.

Super exciting reading to keep you awake all night.

Next we went to  look around the Gran Telescopio Canarias where we were observing later that night.

Gran Telescopio Canarias. (GranTeCan)

It's actually much bigger than WHT. The GTC mirror is 36 segments making up a 10.4m (410in) mirror. I only really realized the size when I found one of the segments (it was taller than me). This things is massive. The whole thing weighs 400 tonnes!

Inside

Huge!

Looking up at some of the mirrors

We took a walk up to the caldera (photos in another post) and had dinner back down at the accommodation. We also picked up our Super Snacks for the night. (Seriously, that's what they call them.) I may have over estimated a bit but I was glad I did as Dario underestimated and ended up eating some of mine. None of it was wasted or left at the end of the night.

Super Snack

I am not sure what most people think observing is like but I bet it isn't like this.

Real life of an astronomer.

We basically sit in a room where we can't even see the telescope and look at computer screens. It's a very impressive set up but when you see a movie where people actually look through the telescope, you know they have not done their homework. 

There is one screen which is very important and that tells you the weather. We want the seeing to be under one. (Seeing is basically how much a star twinkles. We want it not to twinkle! And it is caused by movement in the atmosphere, usually wind.) As you can see by the image below, 'TNG = 3.122" ' is not good! I have never actually see it above 2" before. It was very windy! 

Though the picture is cool. The stripe across the circle is the milky way. Unfortunately given the weather I couldn't face going outside to look. It was way too  cold.

Not great wether readings.

So for most of the night, we didn't do much. I got some work done before my brain gave up at 1am. And then played on my laptop to stay awake. We began at about 2am though who knows what the data will be like? Of course it cleared up at about 4.30am just when we were thinking about giving up for the night and going to (a much dreamed about) bed. So we ended up staying until 7.30am. 

One thing about the mountain is the bugs. Who seem to love being near me. Some of the ants were ... the size of some dogs. We put a euro coin (same roughly as a pound or quarter) next to it for scale. So you can truly understand my "Ewwwww!". I kept an eye on it all night (yes, it was in the control room) but thankfully it seemed asleep.

Ant, with euro coin ()

My room was very nice, but in the bathroom I found 2 cockroaches (I can't get away from them) which were promptly killed with the glass and then after observing, a very large beetle. I put the glass on it, intending on just leaving it. But I kept hearing this voice. 

"I don't understand. There is some invisible barrier. What's going on?!?! I was just walking home and Bam!"

(I was punchy and sleep deprived at this point. Just go with it.) I ended up feeling extremely guilty so I had to put it out. Which required some interesting maneuvering as the doors are very heavy and lock behind you. But I managed not to lock myself out. And passed out for a few hours.

Dog sized beetle.

On Tuesday we had to leave at about 4pm (I didn't wake up until 12.30pm), so after breakfast (or lunch depending on how you look at it), we lounged around before heading back. The drive is not for the faint hearted or those that get travel sick. (I let Dario sit in front as I have never been travel sick yet.)
The flight back was uneventful and we landed in typical La Laguna weather: cloud. I mean literally we were in a cloud that was just sitting on the mountain. Very similar to English drizzle only much more fun. 

Mountain Lodge (Dirty Dancing)

On Monday I hired a car and drove up to Mountain Lodge, about 16 miles outside Blacksburg. The drive up was ... interesting. The first half is a dual carriage way so fine. Then it goes to a windy road (in the dark at this point). Which was also fine, though I am glad I didn't see the sheer drop on the far side at this point. It was when the fog descended when I become a bit nervous. I couldn't see a few meters in front of the car at one point! And on an unfamiliar road in the dark, it's not a good place to be.

The entrance of the hotel is 2 large stone pillars. Just as I was approaching (very slowly) a huge stag stepped out of the fog and into the road, looked at me briefly and ran off. It was amazing!!!!!

After that I went into the hotel area. Well I drove around. It was deserted. There were a few lights on. The hotel is a huge stone thing. I have seen that film. The girl dies in that film! It was a little unnerving. In the end I kind of abandoned my car near the most likely entrance (thankfully I was right) and ran inside. It was sooooo cold! But they plied me with hot tea once I got there so all good. (And nothing like where my imagination was taking me!)

I went up there to do some outreach for the Elder Hostel. Over 50s from around the country descend and spend a week doing astronomy. I did a planetarium show on Monday night, which didn't exactly go to plan thanks to technical difficulties. They were supposed to go to a professional show but no one wanted to go outside so they got stuck with me! (Somewhat less that professional - hey it's been about 3 years since I last did one!)
But they were a great bunch and didn't seem to mind my fumbling. :-) I was going to go and have a drink with them afterwards but once I got to my room I crashed! (I was going to take a photo of the room as it was nice but I made a mess first!)

On Tuesday morning, I gave a 2.5 hr talk on the history of Astronomy.
1.) 2.5 hours is a long to talk for!
2.) I spent the weekend learning about the history as I have no clue.
3.) I had a historian in the front row how taught this for a living.
Still, it went well. I know my limits so when the historian interrupted (politely), I was happy to stop and let him talk. It was interesting and it gave me a break. (And he is going to email his notes so I can improve the talk for a later date.)

My talk room.

The hotel was nice but a bit old and out dated. The bathroom was impressively cold in the morning (and had no shower curtain so ended up very wet too!).  This was not helped by a snow storm over night. I braved it after my talk to take some photos.

Snow

There wasn't a lot, thankfully as I had to drive that day back down the mountain. But it made the lodge look very pretty.

Mountain lodge.

Mountain Lodge's claim to fame is it was the set of Dirty Dancing. They have a lot of things out to remind people. I need to rematch the film now. (I meant to before I went but work has been crazy so haven't had much downtime recently.)

Memorial to Patrick Swayze

From the gazebo

Unfortunately there is a lot less of a lake than there used to be. A lot less.

The boat house.

Jetting to the "lake"

And I found a helpful thermometer to prove how cold it was. And I should point out this was without wind chill.

Cold!

I do not like!

 I did like all the little (fearless) birds around.

I wanted to get more photos but it was just way too cold. I had double layered fleece gloves on and after 10 minutes,  I couldn't feel my hands! So I got in the car and went home!

Griffith Observatory

On Tuesday night, Rachel and I went out to Griffith Observatory to see the telescope and the sunset. We managed to pick the one fully cloudy day since we got here so far.

View from the Observatory

Rachel overlooking Hollywood

The infamous sign

 The Observatory, based in Griffith park, is very pretty ad art deco. I loved the architecture.

Griffith observatory.

Griffith park and LA

The dome, overlooking the city

 Apparently this is the worlds most looked through telescope and I think they do open it up on some nights. Obviously not that night though.

12-inch Zeiss refracting telescope

Posing by the dome

There was also a rotating periscope looking thing. We had no idea what it was as there were no signs. But had fun photographing ourselves in its mirror.

Can you see me?

The park at the Observatory is very pretty though it would have looked a lot nicer in the sun! (It actually rained here on Monday. Apparently it never rains in Pasadena and one person described it as a sign of the approaching apocalypse. My rain making power is unstoppable!)

Observartory

View of the grounds from the top of the dome.

There was also a rather random statue to James Dean. Apparently he filmed a lot of "Rebel without a Cause" on the Observatory grounds and shortly after it became a very popular spot to film at.

James Dean

 We also had fun inside the main building.

Thoughtful discussions with Einstein

Yes. yes. Very interesting

 I was really impressed with the displays. And super excited that in the planets area they had kept Pluto! One of the most popular activities were the scales which measures your weight on the different planets.

Fat on jupiter

Much prefer my weight on Pluto.

Rings of saturn

The main building was art deco inside too and the ceiling was obviously painted in an era of style, before astronomy budget cuts.

ceiling of the main building

 They also fired the Tesla coil which is always fun!

Tesla coil

 We did get to catch the sunset. Unfortunately this was as good as it got. We are planning on trying to catch the sunset over the see and hoping for better weather.

Sunset. Sort of.

But the view out of LA was really cool. You only really see how big it is when lit up.

LA at night 

The observatory

 Back at the flat, we had a late dinner of wine and some amazing cheese while watching Criminal Minds. We have some better wine but we are going to savor that on the weekend. The only bad point was when we tried to open a second bottle (as I had used most of the first cooking the night before). We have a rubbish corkscrew whig requires sheer muscle to get the cork out. And it didn't budget! So I need to buy a better corkscrew!

Cheese, wine, chocolate and raspberries for dinner! Yummy!