Guest post: the not so remote island of La Palma

Our guest post of today is by Almudena Alonso-Herrero, an astronomer. She travels a lot to the Canary Islands (Spain) and especially to the island of La Palma because of the beautiful clear skies and the awesome telescopes!

This is Los Cancajos beach on the island of La Palma. Note all the clouds at sea level but...

 

... when you go up to a 2500m elevation you find blue clear skies and a beautiful collection of telescopes at El Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory

This is the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS with a huge primary mirror of 10.4m in diameter! Note the so-called "sea of clouds"

 

 And this is inside the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS dome

 And a beautiful sunset before we start our night of observations with the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (well it was service time but we were at the control room for a few hours!),