The First Trip (January 1998)
My first observation trip to La Palma took place on 17th - 22nd Jan 1998. I
reserved a regular flight from Tuorla Observatory's co-operative travel
agency. The route just seemed a bit rough: Turku-Helsinki-Amsterdam-Madrid-
Tenerife-La Palma ... La Palma-Tenerife-Barcelona-Brussels-Helsinki-Turku. The
first of the six days of the trip was going to spend in flying from Turku to
La Palma, the next two at Santa Cruz de la Palma, the next two at the
Observatory, and the last one on the way back to Finland. I reserved my hotel
rooms by sending email to Paco Armas in La Palma who is the
administrator of NOT. He reserved a room for me both at the observatory
Residencia and at Aparthotel Castillete in Santa Cruz. He also
reserved me a car to be rented for three days. Because of the co-operation
deals of the observatory both hotel bill and car rental were considerably less
expensive than usually.
Before I started my journey I had to contact the IACn (Instituto
de Astrofísica de Canarias) financial office to get a EU funding for my
flights and stay at the Residencia. I also had to fill in a WWW form to let
the NOT personnel to know what kind of instruments I was going to need.
On Saturday 17th of January I woke up early in the morning to catch the plane
to Helsinki; scheduled to leave at 7 am. I had anticipated, with some delight,
to benefit of the new co-operation between Finnair and Iberia by
at least being able to check in all the way to Tenerife. But no, the clerk at
the check in desk in Turku returned me back to the real world by telling me
that "We can't check you in but to Amsterdam, it is a different company after
that." Of course, I forgot that nothing useful can result from such a
co-operation. In addition the Turku-Helsinki plane was almost full and the
pilot landed it like throwing a bag of potatoes to the ground.
Fortunately I did not have to wait long in Helsinki. I continued to Amsterdam
this time in an almost empty plane. The flight was comfortable and the landing
perfect--I started to feel much better. In Amsterdam I had to wait for three
hours but I didn't mind since I had not been there before. I explored the
services of the air port and started to write all this down. I checked myself
in to the Iberia flights to Madrid and further to Tenerife. "I am sorry, sir.
Your connecting flight from Tenerife to La Palma is with Binter Canarias and
we can not book you in with them from here." A lesson to Finnair staff, when
that was told to me with a happy, but apologetic, smile I was only happy to
hear the - not so bad - news.
However, on the flight the service wasn't much different from the Finnair
service. The same tired and indifferent faces performed the compulsory feeding
and presenting of safety instructions. Even food belonged to the class, where
air plane food got its questionable fame. Fortunately the plane was only half
full and pilots competent.
The Madrid air port was enormous. The clever architects had placed all signs
and monitors to the departure lounge--nowhere near the gate where we got out
of the Amsterdam plane. When I finally found my departure gate to Tenerife, I
noticed that there were three different flight numbers assigned to the plane;
and a corresponding number of people waiting for the flight. Not surprisingly
the plane got full as far as I could see. The flight did nothing to improve my
image of Iberia.
We arrived to Tenerife a quarter early. It was cloudy and coldish at the
famous holiday island. The northern air port (for Spanish internal traffic) of
Tenerife is small and simple, so it took me a whole five minutes to find the
departure area and to check in for my Binter Canarias flight to La
Palma. That short flight threw Binter Canarias immediately to third place on
my airline company superiority list (where British Airways holds the
first place and Air France the second). The planes of this small
company are clean and cosy and the staff well chosen. The air hostesses were
cute, courteous, cheerful, and friendly. During the half an hour flight they
served a candy on takeup and landing to help balance the ear pressure, they
served chocolate bars in mid flight and water for the thirsty, they went about
asking people for their wishes and managed to give an impression that you were
the only one travelling in first class.
I arrived to La Palma at eight thirty, when it was already a dark night. I
took a taxi to my hotel in Santa Cruz de la Palma. My reservation was in order
so I got my room and went to bed after a quick shower.
On Sunday (18 JAN) I checked out the city, which turned out to be small and
quiet (at least on Sunday). I ate a large local salad, cod in whiskey, and
half a bottle of red wine for a very reasonable price of 13 USD in
Restaurant Canarias. In the evening I went out to see the weather, which
had been cloudy all day. I stepped out of the hotel but street lights were too
bright for me to see anything in the sky and I decided to walk across the
street. At that precise moment the street light on top of me went out and I
was able to see the cloudy sky. When I started to return back to the hotel the
street light switched on again - cute, the first polite street light I have
met so far.
On Monday morning (19 JAN) I woke up early to have plenty of time to make
myself ready for the drive to the observatory (Observatorio del Roque de los
Muchachos - ORM). As I walked into the room where breakfast was being served I
noticed a naval officer dressed in shining white uniform sitting in the bar.
After the breakfast I went out to change some FMK into Spanish Pesetas. I
noticed a beautiful four-masted sailing-ship anchored just outside the harbour
of Santa Cruz... and still cloudy weather. However, it was getting clear and I
was able to see the silhouettes of Tenerife and La Gomera on the
horizon. I paid my room, received the car from the manager/owner of the car
rental agency, and met Mr. Armas who was going to guide me to the observatory
- just like we had agreed on email before my trip. I followed his car driving
my own Seat Marbella up the mountain on a road that seemed to go on and on
forever. We passed one layer of clouds on our way up and an another was still
above us when we reached the observatory. My most important discovery that day
was that I really hate cars without automatic gear and especially Seat
Marbellas.
We went to the observatory Residencia, I got a brief introduction of the place
and its routines. And as I had expected my room was just like any hotel room.
Eating arrangements were peculiar: well before meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner
and snack to be taken to the observatory domes) one must fill in his
attendance in each of them in a list on the dining room wall. In addition, on
the way to the dining room one must drop a little coupon with his name, date,
and the type of meal to a little box on the counter. A long night of observing
takes up some energy and the snacks replace it; there are two sizes of snacks
at ORM: snack and supersnack. The snack costs about 500 pesetas and the
supersnack 1500 pesetas. On a list of various items one can mark the items
(and amounts of those) he wants to be included in his snack (as long as the
total cost of the selected items does not go over the price of the snack. When
leaving to the domes, one can fetch his snack from the kitchen.
I had one evening free before my observing night so I just wrote a few post
cards, dined, and followed the weather on WWW. Especially useful were the
cloud animations where a day's satellite images are shown in a sequence so
that the movement of the clouds is clearly visible. With these I was able to
make estimations of how the weather was going to be for the next few hours. It
was and seemed to stay cloudy.
The NOT with its environment. The telescope is naturally in the silvery
dome. In the other building there are some recreational facilities and some
office rooms. The air is a bit hazy because of a dusty wind from Sahara. That
haziness is visible in all the photos on these pages.
After a well slept night I woke up on Tuesday morning (20 JAN) and drove to
NOT after eating breakfast. I was supposed to meet my support astronomer
Colin Aspin, as we had agreed on email the day before. Instead I
met software engineer Ingvar Svärdh who told me that Colin
was coming in late due to car trouble. He showed me around NOT before I
returned to Residencia. For the rest of the day I lived in suspense because
the sky was and seemed to stay cloudy. I checked the web animations regularly
but all they showed was a huge cloud formation south of the Canary Islands
pushing continuously new clouds over the islands. I also kept my colleagues at
Tuorla in agony reporting the weather to them via email.
The dome of NOT. When a telescope is used for observations it must be
rotated along with the rotation of the celestial sphere to keep objects in the
field of the telescope. At NOT this has been built so that the entire dome
rotates with the telescope and the telescope inside is rotatable separately
if the dome stops for any reason. Unexpected halts in the dome rotation happen
sometimes as people or animals trigger on the security system at the bottom of
the main entrance stairs. The system is needed to avoid unfortunate accidents
in case someone gets stuck in the stairs (the dome weighs 43 tons). The
strange object next to the dome is a piece of machinery used to lift the main
mirror out of the dome when it is being taken to be aluminized (the weight of
the mirror is almost two thousand kilograms).
When the night was falling I returned to NOT and met Colin who told me that
poor weather had prevented observations on several nights before this one. We
made NOT and ourselves ready for the observations, if nothing else at least
for rehearsal. When the Sun set a surprising opening formed directly above us
and we were able to start observing. All through the night we followed the
movements of the clouds in satellite images and were even more astonished to
see that there was a small hole circling above us but plenty of clouds all
around. I have usually had very good luck with the weather of my astronomical
observations but this was almost ridiculous (this sentence should not be taken
literally since as a scientist I don't believe in luck but in coincidences).
Even when we went outside to check the weather with our own eyes we could see
the dark shadowy clouds around us on the horizon but beautiful, clear, starry
sky above us. It was almost morning when the clouds finally rolled over the
observatory. So, I got most of my observations made - including my IC 342
Cepheids - and I didn't have to return to Tuorla empty handed. The
measurements of the spectrum of quasar OJ 287 gave us some trouble when
everything didn't go as smoothly as we had anticipated. Without Colin's help I
would not have survived my first observations at NOT at all.
For some hours in the evening we were accompanied by the next night's observer
who came to see the telescope and the routines of using it. That is what I was
supposed to do as well, but the night before mine had been too cloudy to make
any observations. For a while it was almost crowded in the observing room when
the electronics engineer of NOT Graham Cox came to check on the
operation of the machinery.
Pico de Teide is the highest mountain on the island of Tenerife with the
height of 3718 metres (12200 ft.). Tenerife is about 100 km (60 miles) from La
Palma for which reason it is often difficult to see it when the weather is
dusty or misty, especially from the beach.
On Wednesday morning (21 JAN) I switched off all the equipment (Colin had left
a little earlier to sleep) and returned to Residencia where I went to bed just
before 10 am. I slept (poorly) for three hours, got up, and drove back to the
NOT to get my observations that Colin had burned on a CD-ROM. Once more I
returned to Residencia to sign my meals and room to be paid by IAC. I drove
down the mountain back to Santa Cruz de la Palma and made my way to Aparthotel
Castillete where a rather charming receptionist girl remembered me and gave me
my room key before I had a chance to introduce myself. I went to bed early
after I had packed everything ready for the next morning.
Just next to NOT there are a few British telescopes, of which the most
famous one is the William Herschel Telescope (WHT - mirror: 4.2 m or 165 in.)
on the left. The other ones are Isaac Newton Telescope (mirror: 2.5 m or 100
in.) and Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope (mirror: 1 m or 40 in.).
Political statement: As one of the first decisions the Labour party (!)
did when they got the majority in the parliament of the United Kingdom was to
abolish the oldest and most famous astronomical institute in the world. They
close the Royal Greenwich Observatory (RGO) which was founded by king
Charles II in 1675. Some of the most famous astronomers of all times
had worked there and the Washington Conference of 1884 fixed the meridian
through Greenwich as the zero point of longitude. With the abolishment of RGO
one or more of these telescopes on the photo are sold out or scrapped.
I woke up to Thursday (22 JAN) after a restless sleep, had some breakfast, and
tried to pay my room with my VISA card. The VISA apparatus reported the line
to Finland busy - and again when I had fetched my suitcase. I decided to pay
with cash because I was running out of time. After that I had less than a
dollar's worth of pesetas in my wallet. I drove, hastily, to air port on a
road I didn't know, in a car I hated, but reached my destination in time.
However, I did not have time to fill in the petrol as I should have. I got to
the check in line 30 minutes before the scheduled departure. There were two
check in desks open but one of them had a problematic customer and eventually
the clerks of both desks were trying to check in the unfortunate passanger.
Finally one of them left somewhere with her customer and our line started to
get shorter. When I got myself checked in there were still some ten minutes to
wait for the plane. Anyway, the day had started the way it was going to
continue.
The flight to Tenerife was again a pleasant experience and Binter Canarias got
some extra points in my list of airline companies. There was a lot of time
before the plane to Barcelona was about to leave so naturally there were no
problems whatsoever in check in. After I had been bored to death we finally
departed. At first I enjoyed the sight of African mountains and then the
Gibraltar which was as beautiful as a jewel with the Sun shining from
the best possible direction to it. On the Mediterranean Sea I was able to see
a glimpse of Mallorca before landing to Barcelona which was covered by a
horrendous brownish yellow layer of smog.
There were no proper signs nor monitors in the area of Barcelona air port
where we got out of the plane so I ran to a info desk a few hundred metres
from the gate (there was no time to waste). The plane to Brussels was to leave
from the departure hall M1, which naturally was in the opposite direction from
our landing gate than the info desk was. I ran to the other end of the air
port to find the monitor proclaiming "ESTIMAT 16:40" about the plane to
Brussels. The plane was supposed to leave at 16:15 and anything after that
might be too late for me to change planes in Brussels as I had to check in as
well. I went to the info desk of this hall where a young lady happily declared
that the flight was going to be on time. When I requested a reason for the
time on the monitor she checked from her colleague who said that there was a
mistake on the monitor, it was going to be corrected, and that the plane was
going to leave on time. Their chief came by and noticed what was going on. He
asked another lady to check the information on her computer and told me the
result: the gate had changed from 12 to 17 but the plane was leaving on time.
Finally the plane left 20 minutes late. At four o'clock an announcement (in
Spanish and fortunately also in French) stated that the plane was leaving from
gate 17. We approached gate 17 but there was a large sign with the text
"Mallorca" on it. I heard the Iberia stewardess telling someone [in Spanish]
that this was indeed the Brussels gate, for a while until the normal gate 12
is reinstated. We stepped out of the door into a bus, in which I saw plenty of
people arriving to the gate 17, walking back a bit, and negotiating among
themselves apparently of what to do. I never knew how many passangers never
reached the plane at that time. Finally the bus drove us to the plane.
I waited for, with increasing excitement, our arrival to Brussels because I
really had very little time to find and check in to the plane to Helsinki.
Finally, out of the Barcelona plane I had 20 minutes to do this. Fortunately
there was an occupied check in desk next to our landing gate and I was able to
get instructions to terminal B to find the Finnair gates. We were in terminal
C. The Brussels air port is enormous and running through it to terminal B I
discovered it to be under renovations. There was a long detour around the area
that was being renovated, but fortunately the signs were clear and
multitudinous. Yet another stroke of fortune (an almost improbable coincident)
was that the very first gate in terminal B was the one I was searching and
that the check in desk was located just next to the gate. I was the last one
to get into the plane - and the only one with an empty seat next to me. The
flight went fine and we arrived to Helsinki early (at 10:50 pm.). That was bad
luck because the last flight, the one to Turku, was scheduled at 0:30 am.
The time went so slowly that I died again of boredom. The Helsinki-Vantaa air
port is totally dead at night; no shops or restaurants open and almost no
passangers either. Soon we got a message that our flight was going to be
delayed because a connecting flight from somewhere was delayed and we had to
wait for people on that plane to arrive. Finally we left at 1:10 am. on a
small SAAB which bobbed around in heavy winds. Especially in Turku the wind
blew so hard that I thought we were going to crash to the air field. The
bobbing stopped just a few metres from the runway so we survived. The curse of
Thursday seemed to have lost its grip on me as I got lucky getting home. A
docent from Tuorla Observatory Jia-Quing Zheng was waiting for
our professor to arrive on that plane but since he wasn't on the plane Zheng
offered me a ride home instead.
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