According to the locals, the Canary Islands belong politically to Europe (Spain), geographically to Africa, and culturally to Latin America. They are located approximately 100 km west of Morocco. Historically, they got their name from Pliny, from the wild dogs (canes) that lived there, and it seems they were inhabited by ancient Greeks as well.
Their favorable geographical location combined with their dry climate were significant factors in making them an attraction for scientists, particularly astronomers. Nowadays, 37 observatories have been installed on the high peaks of their mountains. In this issue and in upcoming ones, we will guide you through some of them!
NOT – Nordic Optical Telescope
The project for the construction of a Northern European Telescope was first proposed in 1980 by professors Bengt Strömgren and Anders Reiz, who secured funding for a feasibility study for a 2.5-meter telescope from the Carlsberg Foundation. Funding for the initial activities of the project, such as site selection and design, began from the Swedish and Danish Research Councils for Natural Sciences. Thus, the Scientific Society of the Northern European Optical Telescope (NOTSA) was established in January 1984 with funding from four European councils (Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden).
The construction began in Las Palmas, in the Canary Islands. After several technical and financial challenges, the telescope became officially operational in 1989, and regular observations began in 1990. Hugo Schwarz took on the task of further improving the telescope in the following years due to its excellent location and the observations it provided to science. Thus, it was equipped with a set of modern optical and infrared instruments. Some of these are:
- Infrared cameras and polarimeters at various wavelengths
- Spectrographs
- State-of-the-art CCD cameras
The telescope has contributed to research on exoplanets, asteroids, active galaxies, and binary stars, among other areas.
GTC – Gran Telescopio Canarias
The Great Telescope of the Canary Islands (Gran Telescopio Canarias or GranTeCan or GTC) is a telescope with a diameter of 10.4 meters, located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on the island of Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, Spain. It is the largest optical telescope with a single aperture in the world.
The construction of the telescope took seven years and cost 130 million euros. Its installation was challenging due to the weather conditions and the transportation of equipment to such a remote location. The first observations were made in the summer of 2007 with 12 segments of its main mirror, which were later reinforced, and it is now equipped with 36 hexagonal mirrors.
The telescope is equipped with a spectrograph capable of obtaining spectra from multiple objects simultaneously, cameras, and polarimeters in the optical range, a coronagraph (a device used by astronomers to block out the light from a star or the Sun to reveal objects around it).
It is yet another telescope that innovates with its discoveries, such as:
- one of the most distant black holes from us
- the fastest rotating white dwarf
- What happens after a gamma-ray burst and where they may originate.
- How the first galaxies were formed
- One of the largest galaxy clusters similar to the Virgo, at a very distant distance.
Thank you to our page friend Ignasio for his wonderful photos!
Sources:
https://www.go-astronomy.com/observatories-canary-islands.php
Kateriniovi Triantafillaki