August arrived again, and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) is participating in the festival to honour our Lady the Virgin of Light in the town of Garafía (La Palma), the municipality which is the home of the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (ORM). An outreach lectura, the exhibition “100 Square Moons” and the traditional open day are some of the organized activities.
This year, coinciding with the festival of the patron of the municipality of the Town of Garafía in La Palma, the IAC and the user institutions in the ORM, in collaboration with the department of Culture of the Town Council, have organized a number of activities whose aim is to bring the science carried out with the telescopes to the inhabitants of the town.
On Monday 12th, at 19.00 hours in the assembly hall of the culture building, there will be a lectura by Paolo G. Calisse, the manager of the headquarters of the CTA- North, with the title “Ice, Desert, and Mountain: gateways to the most exotic universe”. Afterwards, at 20.00 hours in the exhibition hall of the Culture Building, there will be the inauguration of the photographic show “100 Square Moons” presented by Juan Carlos Pérez Arencibia, the manager of the ORM, which will be open for visits until September 6th.
Finally on Fridays 16th will take place the XXXVII ORM Open Days for the inhabitants of the Town of Garafía. During the morning a number of groups of residents of the municipality will visit some of the telescopes in the Observatory. As in previous years the day will finish with a meal for the visitors as well as the organizers and the telescope staff.
An exhibition with a long trajectory
“100 Square Moons” is an educational and divulgative exhibition composed of nine astronomical images taken by astrophotographer Daniel López, together with their corresponding explanatory panels. The images were obtained with the Sky Treasure Chest (STC), and astrograph belonging to the Unit of Communication and Scientific Culture (UC3) of the IAC, at the Teide Observatory (Tenerife, Canary Islands).
The linear size of each photograph is ten times the apparent diameter of the moon, which is used as the unit of measurement. This implies an area of 100 square moons, which explains the name of the exhibition. The themes of the images cover almost all types of astronomical objects and some relevant discoveries in astrophysics.
This is an itinerant exhibition which has already been shown at several places in the world, such as the European Parliament in Brussels, at the headquarters of the Cervantes Institute, the University of Ochanomizu, the National Centre for the Arts in Tokyo, and in the campus of the Institute of Industrial Science (Komaba and Kashiwa) in Japan, and in Post Office Number 1 in Tenerife. The exhibition has also passed through a number of schools and institutes in the Canary Archipelago during the school year.
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