The group needed to split into two parties to travel by two different routes, for this trip, and reassembled at the airport at Santa Cruz de la Palma, for travel to their accommodation at La Galga, La Palma. We ate at the grill at La Galga on the first night, while we met the contact for our accommodation. Fortunately one of our party spoke good Spanish, as the contact person spoke only Spanish. After a meal at the grill we travelled up the mountain road to our accommodation at Casona La Galga and settled down for our first night on the island. The accommodation had been booked through the Rural Tourism Association, and proved to be a villa at the top of a long mountain road, with superb views over the surrounding countryside. After breakfast the following morning, we discovered that part of the local eco-structure included a group of lizards or geckos which inhabited the stone walls surrounding the villa. They were quite partial to “Alpen” and “Cornflakes”.

Casona La Galga

Barranco de La Galga

The following day, the 24th November, was spent exploring the local vicinity. We shopped for food, and visited the local viewpoint at Mirador de la Galga, where we had good views over the Barranco de La Galga. Lots of the exotic plants which we struggle to grow indoors at home grow naturally outdoors on the island.

Bird of Paradise Plants

On the morning of 25th November, we travelled up to the Observatory. Rains had brought rocks down over the mountain roads and at the beginning of the journey, one of the cars lost the oil from it’s sump We were then down to three cars, and shortly afterwards a further car suffered a puncture due to the rocks brought down in rainfall. This was repaired before the long ascent up the mountain to the observatory. The ascent to the top of the 7,200 ft mountain took place for the most part through thick cloud. We were hoping that the observatory was above the cloud, as it is for all but five nights of the year. We were apprehensive when arriving at the top of the mountain that our visit had coincided with one of those five nights! The mountain top was totally covered in cloud; the temperature was 0 degrees Centigrade, and it was raining! At the lower atmospheric pressure our crisp bags blew up!

Inflated Crisp Bags

The Residence

We reported in at the Residence, and waited for our support astronomer of the evening, Javier Mendez Alvarez. We were shown around the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, consisting of the Isaac Newton, the 4.2 m. William Herschel, one of the best in the Northern Hemisphere, and finally the 1m Jacobus Kapteyn, which we were to work on for the night.

The Group at the JKT

J.K.T. Dome

William Herschel Telescope

Jacobus Kapteyn

The CCD on the JKD

We programmed in the nights viewing before returning to the residence for the evening meal.We had intended to image M1, the Crab Nebula, but this had already been imaged as part of the Messier Objects in the JKT set of Professional Images. We found that the school from La Palma, who had been observing the previous evening had met with one of the five evenings a year when viewing is impossible, and had failed to image their objects. As part of a collaborative programme we agreed to image their programme of M76, 78, and M103. We programmed in the Right Ascension and Declination coordinates for all of these objects so that the telescope would image these in turn. The images were to be taken using Visible, Red and Violet filters, as well as Infra red, and two types of Hydrogen Alpha filter. For some of the images this meant an imaging time in excess of one hour. We watched Javier fill the Cryostat with liquid nitrogen to keep random electronic noise in the detectors to a minimum.

The Cryostat Filling

The weather remained at 100% humidity (rain!), and the telescope dome could not be opened until it had been dry for thirty minutes. It did not look hopeful, but in the meantime we visited the astronomers now working in the William Herschel Telescope. A Portuguese astronomer, Pedro, described his work on Kuiper Belt Objects to us - very enthusiastically at that our of the morning! Just as he was finishing it was announced that the dome shutters were opening, and we walked into to the darkened dome to see this happen.

We then returned to the JKT to open the shutters and start our night’s imaging. Javier explained the intricacies of adapting for non-linear responses in the CCD (Charge Coupled Device) and also in adapting for electronic noise by taking “flats” and “biases” which are subtracted from the image. The students soon followed these manipulations, and were later left to run the telescope by themselves. The telescope tracked from one object to another after images were finished, making “space fiction” noise from the tracking systems and cryostat.

The JKT Control Room with Javier and the Boys

David and Bob set up a small telescope outside the dome during the night. The sky was brilliantly clear, with the Milky Way very visible. David pointed out many galaxies and nebula only visible from the U.K. with much bigger telescopes. Comet Linear was also visible; without the latest coordinates for this quickly moving comet it was not possible to find it in the JKT, with it’s narrow arc-second window., but it was visible in the small telescope. There were many more stars visible than in the polluted atmosphere at home, and many more because of the different latitude. During the night Bob noticed the “Zodiacal Light” , which is a column of light formed by the Sun’s light reflecting from dust in the solar system.

Telescopes being set up outside JKT

Panoramic View from Roque de los Muchacos

During the rest of the week we visited the volcanic region of the south of the island to see the Volcano of Teneguia and the Volcano of San Antonio. One other day we visited the Caldera de Taburiente, viewing it from the south , at La Cumbrecita. The Caldera is a vast cauldron formed by land-slip. We could see the Observatory on the rim of the Caldera. We had been hopeful of swimming in Chaco Azul, a swimming pool filled by sea water, but on our visit the sea was violently filling the pool and the red flag was prohibiting swimming. The lads were disappointed because this was the only swimming we could permit on the island where the sea currents are quite strong. When we visited the visitor’s centre in Los Llanos we noticed a rainbow over the road up to La Cumbrecita It completely filled the valley.

The Volcano at Teneguia

Caldera de Taburiente

Rainbow over the Valley at Los Llanos

We returned to the UK on Friday 30th November; again by two different routes The students returned with Mrs Harley directly to Gatwick. Mr and Mrs Harwood , Mr Strange and Mr Mizon returned via Tenerife North and Barcelona. Once home David Strange set about making accounts of the visit to La Palma visible on his own web page and those of the Wessex Astronomical Society and the Thomas Hardye School. David will also make his photo images available to students.