Sources
Help build the largest human-edited directory on the web.
Submit a site - Become an editor
Wikipedia. Licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Are you an expert in this subject? Join the discussion and share your knowledge at Wikipedia.org.
Roque de los Muchachos Observatory
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Roque de los Muchachos Observatory is an astronomical observatory located in the municipality of Garafía on the island of La Palma. The observatory site is operated by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias which is based on nearby Tenerife, and it is part of European Northern Observatory.
The seeing statistics make it the second best location for optical and infrared astronomy after Mauna Kea Observatory, Hawaii. The site has some of the premier astronomical facilities in the Northern Hemisphere, including the adaptive optics corrected Swedish Solar Telescope which provides the highest resolution solar imaging of any telescope, and the 10.4 m Gran Telescopio Canarias (currently under construction).
The observatory started with the Isaac Newton Telescope, which was moved to La Palma from the Royal Greenwich Observatory site at Herstmonceux Castle in Sussex, England in 1979. The move was beset with difficulties, and it is widely recognized that it would have been cheaper to have built a new telescope rather than moving an existing one.
The observatory was initiated in Santa Cruz de La Palma by representatives from Spain, Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom. Other countries became involved later, including Germany, Norway, The Netherlands, Finland, Iceland and the USA.
The observatory was officially inaugurated on the 29th June 1985 by the Spanish royal family and six European heads of state. Seven helicopter pads were built at the observatory to allow the dignitaries to arrive in comfort.
A fire on the mountainside in 1997 damaged one of the gamma-ray telescopes, but the fire in September 2005 did no serious damage to buildings or telescopes.