84
with a view to transferring their present solar observatory on the island of
Capri to the Canary Islands and installing telescopes of the latest design.
At about that time Professor Kiepenheuer, Director of the Fraunhofer
Institute, took it into his head to build a solar tower on the very peak of
Mount Teide. He was convinced that up there the conditions for observing
the sun would be excellent, quite forgetting about the turbulence caused by
heat from the volcano and high-mountain katabatic winds. A project was
planned and reached the stage where material was taken up to the peak by
mule and work started. There were so many difficulties with the building
work, and such was the growing opposition of the people of Tenerife, who
were most unhappy at seeing such contamination of the very peak of their
totemic mountain, that the project—thank heavens!—was eventually abandoned. All that remains of this fantasy are a few buried piles slowly being
eaten away by sulphurous vapours.
After carrying out site testing on the island of Capri and Sicily, southern
Greece, and southern Portugal, the Germans finally decided that the Canarian
summits were their best option. They requested permission to build a tower
to house a solar telescope on an esplanade close to the two rocks that give
Roque de los Muchachos its name. That space is now occupied by a small
parking space and a geodetic marker. The corresponding agreement was signed
in 1977 and the telescope was operational the following year. After comparative measurements were made, it was finally decided that Tenerife would be
the marginally better location, so they had to demolish the tower before transferring their solar telescopes to Teide Observatory.
The interest of our European colleagues in the Canarian summits began to
grow. Once the installation of major telescopes in the Canaries had really
begun to be taken seriously, the question arose of juridical guarantees through
binding agreements. We all agreed on the necessity of a sound legal grounding
to guarantee and safeguard the emplacement and continuity of the telescopes.
Negotiations intensified and the respective governments were informed.
The British invited me to see British astronomy for myself and they prepared a truly impressive welcome for me. They took me to the Royal
Observatory, Edinburgh, the new Royal Greenwich Observatory in Sussex,
the Cavendish Laboratory, where, not long before pulsars ('pulsating stars')
had been discovered, and I met the Nobel laureate Antony Hewish. We dined
at Trinity College—in the same dining hall frequented by Newton, they told
me. The tour ended in London with a dinner at the Royal Society, with all the
splendour and decadent ritual of that institution. We were even served by an
old waiter, as in the films. If it had been their intention to dazzle and
F. Sánchez
with a view to transferring their present solar observatory on the island of
Capri to the Canary Islands and installing telescopes of the latest design.
At about that time Professor Kiepenheuer, Director of the Fraunhofer
Institute, took it into his head to build a solar tower on the very peak of
Mount Teide. He was convinced that up there the conditions for observing
the sun would be excellent, quite forgetting about the turbulence caused by
heat from the volcano and high-mountain katabatic winds. A project was
planned and reached the stage where material was taken up to the peak by
mule and work started. There were so many difficulties with the building
work, and such was the growing opposition of the people of Tenerife, who
were most unhappy at seeing such contamination of the very peak of their
totemic mountain, that the project—thank heavens!—was eventually abandoned. All that remains of this fantasy are a few buried piles slowly being
eaten away by sulphurous vapours.
After carrying out site testing on the island of Capri and Sicily, southern
Greece, and southern Portugal, the Germans finally decided that the Canarian
summits were their best option. They requested permission to build a tower
to house a solar telescope on an esplanade close to the two rocks that give
Roque de los Muchachos its name. That space is now occupied by a small
parking space and a geodetic marker. The corresponding agreement was signed
in 1977 and the telescope was operational the following year. After comparative measurements were made, it was finally decided that Tenerife would be
the marginally better location, so they had to demolish the tower before transferring their solar telescopes to Teide Observatory.
The interest of our European colleagues in the Canarian summits began to
grow. Once the installation of major telescopes in the Canaries had really
begun to be taken seriously, the question arose of juridical guarantees through
binding agreements. We all agreed on the necessity of a sound legal grounding
to guarantee and safeguard the emplacement and continuity of the telescopes.
Negotiations intensified and the respective governments were informed.
The British invited me to see British astronomy for myself and they prepared a truly impressive welcome for me. They took me to the Royal
Observatory, Edinburgh, the new Royal Greenwich Observatory in Sussex,
the Cavendish Laboratory, where, not long before pulsars ('pulsating stars')
had been discovered, and I met the Nobel laureate Antony Hewish. We dined
at Trinity College—in the same dining hall frequented by Newton, they told
me. The tour ended in London with a dinner at the Royal Society, with all the
splendour and decadent ritual of that institution. We were even served by an
old waiter, as in the films. If it had been their intention to dazzle and
F. Sánchez