Dome of the 10.4-meter Gran Telescopio Canarias, the world's largest optical telescope. // David J. Eicher
On Thursday, September 25, attendees from the Starmus Festival in Tenerife, Canary Islands, boarded an aircraft at Tenerife North airport and set off on a 30-minute flight to another of the Canaries, La Palma, to trek to the world’s largest single aperture optical telescope, the 10.4-meter Gran Telescopio Canarias. Situated at the peak of La Palma at an altitude of 7,438 feet (2,267 meters), the telescope is, of course, the instrument of a large amount of cutting edge research in modern astronomy. This mammoth instrument became the backdrop for a special event this evening, a 108-minute round table discussion between some of the Starmus speakers, moderated by Robert Williams of the Space Telescope Science Institute. Participants included Apollo 7 astronaut Walt Cunningham, cosmic microwave background discoverer Robert Wilson, Director of the Institute for Astrophysics at Tenerife Rafael Rebolo, Starmus Director Garik Israelian, Nobel Prize winning chemist Harold Kroto, and John Mather, Project Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope. Also joining us from Tenerife were Stephen Hawking and paleoanthropologist Katerina Harvati. The 108 minutes, signifying the length of Yuri Gagarin’s historic first flight into space, covered a wide range of topics in astronomy and astrophysics. Hawking finished with a statement on science and religion, and concluded that science must take the lead in understanding the cosmos because “There is no god.”
After the big event, we explored the Gran Telescopio and its control room, had a wonderful dinner in the astronomers’ quarters, where we are staying the night, and visited with many of those who came along on the journey. My wife, Lynda, and I enjoyed a wonderful dinner with Walt Cunningham and his lovely wife, Dot. We then prepared to sleep on the mountain so that we can transfer back to Tenerife tomorrow for more adventures.
What an amazing week!
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Starmus begins with Wilson, Eicher, Dawkins, and Harvati Starmus Day 2: Hawking, May, 51 Degrees North film Starmus Day 3: Book signing, Duke, Kroto, Cunningham, Ellis