The Zodiacal Light and Lasers in the Sky

A few times recently we have noticed a glow in the western sky after sunset. We had thought that it might be some light pollution coming from the main center of the village. This would not be a major problem as La Palma has very strict laws governing light pollution. So this evening we decided to go out for a drive having spotted this glow and find out where it was coming from, and to our surprise we found that the glow did not have a terrestrial source. Having read a bit I discovered that what we were seeing was what is known as the Zodiacal Light. This is the light from the sun being reflected off very small grains of dust in orbit around the Sun. It is only visible in dark non light polluted skies. Unfortunately I didn't manage to get a picture of this but I will keep an eye out and try and get one.

When we got back from our little drive around to try and find the source of the glow, as we got out of the car I looked up to the sky as I normally do and noticed something in the sky. What I saw was a straight line across the sky. This is the 25W Laser which is projected from the William Herschel Telescope to provide an artificial guide star for the adaptive optics system which allows the removal of the effects of the air turbulence which is what causes the stars to twinkle.

30sec Exposure showing Laser

2 1/2 minute Exposure showing Laser tracking stars

Work in Progress

Now that we have the cement mixer set up in an easier position. We have been able to get a lot of jobs done around the house, the two main ones are the position for the water tanks behind the old toilet block which also includes the pipe work for the connection of the new bathroom toilet into the existing sewerage system. This has meant digging out an area and building a block wall to hold back the earth from the top level outside the house.



Also we have been working on putting the roof on the roof. What I mean by that is that on the roof we have a small block built cupboard which will house all the equipment for the solar panels. This week we added the top to this, and once the cement has set we will top this off with some traditional Spanish tiles.

The "Bloody Stupid" Jonhson Sand Delivery System

Well, actually I have decided it can't be called the "Bloody Stupid" Johnson Sand Delivery system as it does in fact work. For those of you who are wondering "Bloody Stupid" Johnson is a character from the disc world novels by Terry Pratchett. The character was an inventor who would make wonderful inventions only they would always have some little quirk which made them next to useless. For example he made a sorting machine for the post office which had a wheel in which PI was exactly 3 and hence would distort space time and sort letters before they had even been written.

But lets get back to the sand delivery system. We have rigged up a system using a piece of large plastic tubbing, some corrugated iron, rope and some wire, and water piping that allows us to shovel sand and gravel in at the top and at the bottom is the cement mixer ready and waiting to receive it's load. With this set up it means that we no longer have to shift large buckets or wheelbarrows full of gravel down every time we want to mix concrete.

The cement mixer in operation to load all you have to do is turn the drum to face the other direction and pour gravel in from the top.

Where, oh Where, DOES all the Crap Go?

This is a very important subject on our minds at the moment, OK it may sound crude or something,but it is REALLY important. Why I hear you ask. Well one of the major tasks this year is to convert the old water tank in to a new bathroom. We now have a roof on the tank and a opening into the house, the next job is to start the pluming, and one of the tasks, as part of that is to lay new drains. Now for you who live in the UK and most major towns this is not hard - find the nearest man hole and connect the new drains to that. Well it is not quite that simple here....
We in the country don't have main drains.. So what do we have? We have what is called a Poso Negro, the direct translation of that is "Black Well", and up to last week we did not know where it was and in what condition it was in. We had some idea that it was located close to the current bathroom, (which is a 1m x 2m concrete hut in the garden). We thought that it might be under about half a meter of soil that was dumped in front of the loo to bring the ground up to the level of the house. Well last week I started clearing a space behind the loo to hold the tank for gray water recycling. while doing so I notest that there appeared to be a concrete wall below the loo....
After some work with a hammer, there was a hole and behold we have the Poso Negro, and what is the poso negro? A large hole in the ground, about 1 meter square and 2 meters deep, (well to the serf ice of the water, I am not going to find out how deep that is!!!!), With the loo on top of it.
So now all I have to do is put in the new pipes and close up the hole and we have somewhere for the new loo to empty into.

We have our Bag...

Well our bag did finally arrived at Sheila's and we have it back with all the bits that were in it. Apart from that we have done nothing this week, it has been raining everyday since we got back and I have been working on the Ruido FanZine Layout most of the time, but that should be all done with by Monday and I hope that the weather will be better next week. We plan to order the new windows for the Dinning hall and Kitchen tomorrow, nothing special just the cheapest we can get.
If the weather improves I need to drill some holes in the roof for all the solar power feeds and lay a concrete base for the battery housing, its only been waiting to do it for 6 months, just haven't been able to get round to it with all the work on the bypass.

Back in La Palma

We are back in La Palma after having spent a week in the UK.

I'm sorry to anyone that we didn't get round to seeing but it's very hard to cram everything into one week.

Both trips were a little problematic due to delays and problems checking in due to the fact that although the flights are all sold as Iberia some of them are provided by BA which means you can't get your boarding passed till you get to the airport and when your first flight is delayed this means you have to run from one end of Madrid Airport to the other in order to get the flight. We made it with minutes to spare, and as we sat on the plane we saw one of our bags turn up and be loaded on the plane. However when we got to Tenerife we found out that it hadn't and we only had one bag. So we asked and they said it had already gone to La Palma via Seville. So we checked in for La Palma and when we got there and spoke to the Iberia rep he was very rude and treated me like a idiot, anyway he said I had to speak to the Binter Canarias office. So I did and they were much better. They knew my bag was still in Madrid and they would try and get it to me tomorrow.

They phoned this morning and the bag should be delivered to Sheila's house either today or tomorrow morning.

Off to go and pick up Tabby later from the Vet, Couldn't pick her up yesterday as the Vet's was closed on Good Friday so we stayed overnight at Sheila's

Ouch That's gotta Hurt

As I am writing this Helen is in bed resting.

This is due to the fact that Wednesday morning while she was doing some tidying up in the garden, she was walking backwards with the wheelbarrow and thinking about other things, and didn't realize that there was a pile of rocks on the ground behind her.

So over she went, unfortunately behind her was a 1.5M drop to the terrace below, with more rocks and other rubbish down there. She managed to get up and back into the house where it appeared that nothing was obviously broken.

How ever when I got home the pain in her side midway under her arm was worrying me so we went to the health center in Barlovento where the doctor examined her and decided that she best go to the Hospital for and x-ray just to make sure she hadn't cracked a rib.

So off the the Hospital above Santa Cruz, and thankfully all here ribs were intact just badly bruised, so Helen has to rest and take it easy for a week or so.

1st Helresa Caption Compertition

OK this large vegtable was culled from our garden, it is a relation to the marrow. Suggestions for a caption on a postcard to Casa de Estrellas...... or alternativaly just add them here as comments.

It´s finished...... Phew that was fast

OK there are a few things left to do, like tomorrowremove the wooden formers and in about 4 weeks time remove the props from that inside but that is it the roof is on, and we have a hole through the wall.

The wall before the doorway

The hole ready for a doorway

The whole roof, complete in 3 Days!!!

The bracing to hold all the concrete in place while it sets

and the props to hole the whole thing up until it dries completely in about 28 Days.

The roof goes on

Well from just the old roof being removed yesterday and a little bit of wall being knocked off things are now speeding along. The concrete beams are in place and the blocks have been placed between them. The whole roof is bring surrounded with steel reinforceing bars that will form a solid ring beam to hole the whole roof togeather once the concrete is poured tomorrow.

Our Builder finishing tiying all the reforcing bars togeatherAnother shot showing all the materials stacked up and the ventalation tube going in.

On the inside the hole for the door is progressing well with just about another 2 foot at the bottom to remove, apparently the wall is harder than they thought.

EEEK!! The Cement mixers are breeding and somebody has nicked our roof

Not much has been happening on the house over the last week as we have had Helen´s son Ben staying with us so we have been doing all the touristy things. Including 2 trips up to the Roque to show Ben round both the Gallilao and the GranTeCan.
Today Helen took the car to drop Ben off at the Airport, so after I finished work at the school I took the bus into Santa Cruz to meet up with Helen to do some shopping. When we got home we discovered that the builder had arrived that morning and started on the work to put a new roof on the water tank and he had brought all his tools along and put them next to ours.
So far all he has removed the old wooden roof and removed the top part of the wall read to put on the roof. Tomorrow he should be creating the doorway through and prepearing to lay the roof.

The old wooden roof has been removedAnd materials to construct the new roof ready and waiting and a shot from the side showing where the preperation has started

Bertha's New Hips

After a number of weeks with problems about parts and postponement due to the weather. Bertha our Berlingo finally has new suspension ball joints. Thanks to our friend Sheila's husband Carlos. Now hopefully once we have had the alignment checked we should stop going through a set of tires every 3 months.

No Soldering Required

I was going to make a small electronic circuit called an EQMOD which would allow the computer to talk directly to the stepper motors inside the EQ6 telescope mount. However with the latest version of the firmware for the mount handset there is what they describe as a "PC Direct Mode".
This can be found in the V3.21 of the handset firmware. With this mode you can just connect the PC to the handset and then the handset to the telescope mount as normal, but use the EQMOD software which gives a major improvement over the standard controls contained within the handset.

On other news I have contacted Nick Hudson at Tru-tech about my filter wheel and he has promised to put some replacement chips in the post

Hole in the Wall Gang

This week I came home from work one day this week to discover that not only had Helen put some rendering on the wall in the dinning room but also a large hole had appeared in the corner of the room through to the bedroom.


Why is there a hole through the wall from the dinning room to the bedroom? Well the trick is that where this hole is there will be a wood burning stove. The hole will house a grill and a fan which will push the hot air from the stove through into the bedroom.

Helen has made a plywood frame to sit in the hole with a correctly sized hole and mounting points to take a standard PC case fan. The PC fan will be powered using a peltier element attached to the stove so that as the stove heats up the peltier will start to generate current causing the fan to run .

Plywood frame ready for fitting.

Fitted in the wall And finaly the wall made good

Oranges & Lemons

One thing we have noticed living here is that every now and then you have various items of produce turn up. We have had potatoes, pumpkin and other things like that, but the other day as we were sorting out some things outside the house to go to the dump. We heard a "hóla" coming up from the steps to the lower terraces, an then appeared the farmer who owns the large house a the top of our pista. On his shoulder was a large bucket full to the brim of Oranges.

It's Broke

As I am typing this I am at Sheila's.

Carlos is outside trying to put the suspension back together on the Berlingo. We took it in last week to get the tires changed as they were badly worn (even though they were only 6 months old) and to check the alignment. However they discovered that the ball joints on the bottom of the suspension were badly worn and needed replacing. Hence why the car was eating tires. We got the parts and this weekend we stayed overnight so that Carlos could change the parts today, however like most things on our berlingo it would seem that the parts are non standard so we are having to put the old ones back until next weekend when the correct parts should be here.

It's not the only thing that I have discovered broken this week. While trying out some of my astronomy equipment this week I discovered that my tru-tech filter wheel is broken. I have been in contact with Ian King who I brought the wheel from and luckily there is somebody else on the Island that I know who also had a problem with his wheel and might have some spare electronics to help me repair it.

What does 2 cubic meters of Gravel look like?

What does 2 cubic meters of gravel look like? Well if you look at the photo below you can see.
This is Helen with her shovel moving the pile a bit so that we could get the car in after the lorry had been. In order to get the gravel delivered we talk to our friends Ann & David from La Casita over at the other end of the village and they then speak to Luis that delivery driver who then if he doesn't forget (which he has a habit of doing!) comes along with his small dumper truck and delivers sand, cement, gravel and what ever else you have ordered.

Why do we need so much sand and gravel? This is the second delivery we have had in the last few weeks. The reason we need so much is that while the weather has been fine for the last week or so and as it has been half term we have been working a lot on the steps and ramp out the front. This is now taking on such gigantic proportions that we have now named it "The Franceses Bypass"

Save Our Astronomy

Now you know that I don't get that political unless it is something that I really feel strongly about.
Right now I am fuming at the stupidity of the current suggested cuts to astronomy research facilities across the UK.
This has come about due to a £80millon budget shortfall in the budget for the Science and Technologies Funding Council (STFC)
Not only will this entail a 25% cut to all physics grants, but several important UK Science facilities are under threat. The most stupid is the withdrawal of the UK from the Gemini north 8Meter telescope on Hawaii this now leaves UK astronomers with out access to a large telescope in the northern hemisphere. Also the funding for most of the UK Telescopes here on La Palma looks like it will stopped as well.

Update, My friend Sheila has put it much better than I ever could on her blog here


To find out more and to find out how you can help visit the following site.

A matter of Balance

After a number of weeks procrastinating I finally got round to drilling and tapping the holes that I need to do in order to mount the LX200R OTA on to the dovetail for the EQ6 Pro mount. However having done this and mounted it all up I discovered that when I tried to balance the mount I could not achieve balance with the existing counterweight bar.
What I needed was a longer bar, the question is

where on the island could I find a cheap solution?

I finally found what I needed in one of the local DIY stores, an 18mm threaded rod about a meter long. In order to fit the retaining ring from the original counterweight bar I would need to cut down the end of the bar in order to make a M10 thread or the other option which Helen came up with was to drill and tap a M10 hole in the end and us a M10 bolt cut down to join the two pieces together.

Below is a photographic explanation of the modification. Enjoy :

The first step was to mark the center of the bar by using a square to draw lines across

Then having worked out the center this is then punched with a centre ready for drilling

Drilling downwards with the hand drill trying carefuly to keep the drill streight. The hole is only about 1/2 inch deep.

Moveing up to a bigger drill meant moving on to a different clamping method

The Hold drilled out to 8.5mm and ready for tapping

Helen tapping the hole to M10 thread

The hole tapped and ready to take the bolt

The M10 Bolt inserted

And cut to the required length ready to take the retaning ring from the original counterweight bar

The retaning ring in place

The new counterweight bar fitted to the EQ6 pro mount

The mount fully assembled and balanced. On the whole the system works very well with the longer bar. The only down side is that after a slew it can take a secound or to for the mount to settle due to vibrations in the counterweight bar.

Tried to do some observing this night but with lots of fast moving clouds and bad seeing ( very unusal for La Palma, but the weather has been funny here for a few weeks) it was almost impossible to get aligned and when I did it was very hard to see much anyway. But it was enough to convince me that the scope and mount combination would work quite well.

A YES for the Roof and a Bad Back

YES we have finally got the permission for the roof on the water tank so now all we have to do is get the builder in, its going to cost €2000 just for the roof and to get the door cut in the wall but once that is done we can start work on converting it to a bathroom. The main problem will be running all the wast pipes. I have not found out where they have to end up yet! It's not like the UK where all you have to do is connect the pipes to the nearest main drain, Some ware near the old loo in the back garden is a very big home covered with concrete, and this is ware all the waste from the loo mysteriously disappears....!!!!
We have not been sitting around ether this week, the steps are progressing onward and upward, we only have one small step to do, it seems that all we are doing at the moment is poring concrete, and this is where the bad back comes in. Thursday It seems that while we were working on the steps Theresa pulled a mussel in her back and she has been in a lot of pain, but still manage to help me today to get another step cast.
I am hopping to get the steps finished next week, and then its just the 10m of ramp that needs doing, but a lot of that is just one large amount of concrete.
We also manage to get the first of the vines pruned, only the ones at the front of the house but as these are in the way of the work on the new roof, I felt that these needed to be done.