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Month: April 2015

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Last night we visited the Tacande Observatory on La Palma to do some observations and to exchange about some technical topics. It's owner is Joan Genebriera who built this observatory back in 2005 - right beside his house 🙂 He worked at the KVA Telescope on La Palma for several years before he retired. His observatory is located close to El Paso at a height of about 765m.
Even though we were in Spain communicating in English was no problem. The telescopes can be used for visual observations as well as for CCD photography. We decided to take some photos of the sky. After we collected some frames of the Sombrero galaxy we decided to try some other objects with just shorter exposure time. For example we tried M3, M95 and the huge Omega Centauri cluster which is not visible from Germany at all. The best results can be found here.

The hours passed very quickly and after 2o'clock we decided to finish our observations since we still had to drive home. We copied everything to an USB stick so that we were able to process the raw data later.

Our conclusion: If you are once on La Palma and you are interested in taking photos of the night sky with a quite good telescope you should pass by at the Tacande Observatory.

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This morning the weather was looking perfect! And so we decided to take another walk on the Ruta de los Volcanes - the volcano route. We did this walk already two years ago and it is just amazing. There is a path going along the whole Cumbre Vieja from Rifugio El Pilar to Fuencaliente in the south of the island. But we take it easy and walk only the first part of this route. We park the car at Mirador Del Jable (28.617327, -17.848487). From there we follow a small road for about two kilometres into the forest. Here you can already see lots of black ash. Then we turn left and walk up for about 300 metres. After leaving the trees behind us there is an amazing view! To the west we see the clouds below us and to the north there is the huge caldera! The sky above us is completely blue! Following the path in the direction of Rifugio El Pilar there comes a sign post. The part that shows up has been removed. But still the path is ok to walk. It leads directly up to the caldera of an old volcano! When you reach the caldera it is possible to walk one big round around it! It looks not far away but it takes a long time to reach the highest point of Pico Birigoyo (1807m). There we take long break and enjoy the view around - you can see Tenerife with the Teide and La Gomera! Then we walk down to Rifugio El Pilar and back to Mirador Del Jable. I think this tour is one of the best of La Palma! When you want you can also continue walking along the volcano route further south for about 20km 😉

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For the second part of our vacation we stayed at Casa Victoria (28.692022, -17.955517). It is situated below the village of El Jesus close to banana plantations. From the garden the view to the Atlantic ocean was fantastic! The house was well equipped with everything we needed. And we also had some geckos in this place that were hiding in a secret place most of the time 😉

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This morning I decided to walk down to the beach! I start directly at Casa La Chirlaca (28.685444, -17.937639) and walk up to the road. From there a really nice hiking path leads to Mirador de El Time. Shortly before reaching the main road there is place where you have a panoramic view down to Los Llanos! From Mirador de El Time I follow a small road further down. I pass many banana plantations. Further down the road turns into a perfect hiking path! The path is directly above the ocean and the view down to Puerto de Tazacorte is amazing! In Puerto de Tazacorta I rent a sun lounger and enjoy some hours of reading at the beach before Carsten comes and picks me up with the car to drive back to our house 😉

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The sunset at Roque de Los Muchachos on La Palma creates a special atmosphere which is hard to describe. When the sun crosses the horizon the different telescope domes open up and the first stars become visible. The sky turns into dark blue and at the horizon the far clouds turn red, yellow and orange. Below us only clouds. While many people are sitting at home in front of their TV great things happen up here - on La Palma - far off the world 🙂

The northern part of the Roque de Los Muchachos observatory is not reachable by car  - at least there are some "Staff only" signs on the road. However, there is a small path which leads up to the Puente Nueva peak. If you park the car at 28°45'46.5"N 17°52'29.1"W right beside the road, walking up there takes only about 15-20 minutes. From there one has a great view on this part of the observatory! Some more details can be found here.