Stargazing time on La Palma – Casa Las Flores

It’s stargazing time on La Palma again – this time from Casa Las Flores. The little house is located in Aguatavar – close to Tijarafe on a height of about 580m. You have a power supply outside the building, free view to Polaris from both terraces and in July the bright part of the Milky Way is perfectly visible between 22:00 and 4:00 local time. Furthermore you have a coffee maker, a table, chairs, a fast WLAN internet connection and a barbecue. What else do you need? 😀

The image is a single frame recorded with an Canon EOS6D in combination with a Samyang 2.8/14mm lens (15 sec. exposure time, ISO4000) . The post processing has been done with rawtherapee.

Tonight I only test my equipment – for tomorrow I plan to record the bright nebula M8 in the milkyway. So stay tuned for the result!

Last updated: June 16, 2022 at 12:10 pm

¿Por qué dormir en un hotel de cinco estrellas si puedes dormir bajo millones de estrellas?

This image of the Milky Way has been recorded in a clear, cold night not so far away from Roque de Los Muchachos on La Palma. It has been recorded with an EOS6D in combination with a Rokinon 14mm/f2.8 fast lens. The exposure time was 20s with ISO6400. A darkframe has been subtracted later on. The RAW file has been developed using rawtherapee. For correction of vignetting and perspective a lens correction profile from this website has been used (btw. thanks for providing this profile!).

The image is also available in full resolution (3.1MB).

Last updated: June 9, 2022 at 22:10 pm

A new star-gazing location on the west side of La Palma

Since the last astro-tour the moon still has left the scene. However, unfortunately Mirador del Jable and Mirador Llano de Las Ventas are covered in clouds and there is quite some wind up there. I am happy that hdmeteo tells me that in advance. Luckily, it also tells me that the west-side of La Palma looks pretty good for tonight. I just have no idea where exactly I should drive to with my equipment. It should be a quiet place with no wind and no traffic but it should still be reachable by car…

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First time astrophotography on La Palma with my own equipment – failed

Astrophotography on La Palma

Astrophotography on La Palma

Weather forecast - Clear sky on La Palma.

Well… I like the moon… but… YEAH! He is gone! Time for astrophotography on La Palma 🙂 For this purpose I rent a VW Caddy here on La Palma. The plan: Put all the equipment and my girlfriend into the Caddy and drive up to Mirador del Jable – a quite popular place for watching the stars. One last look at the weather forecast from aemet… Looks quite promising! Even though it is almost impossible to predict the weather on La Palma. Furthermore, hdmeteo can be helpful to get an idea of the current weather conditions on the island. And last but not least the NOT webcam can give another impression. The decision has been made – tonight will be astro-night!

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Visiting the Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) on top of Roque de Los Muchachos (La Palma)

Recently I had the chance to get an insight into the Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) on top of Roque de Los Muchachos (La Palma). We met the telescope operator for about 30 minutes and he showed us around though the impressive building.

DOLORES (Device Optimized for the LOw RESolution), LRS in short, is a low resolution spectrograph and camara permanently installed at the Nasmyth B focus of the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo.

Since pictures tell a lot more than thousand words here are some photos.

Clear skies!

Last updated: June 16, 2022 at 13:30 pm