Stargazing Trips from Mt Teide Tenerife.

[johnturley]

Has anybody been on one of these trips recently, would be interested to hear about your experiences, I have been on a couple of successful trips in the past, but more recently been unlucky either with the weather, and/or the trip organiser cancelling the trip at the last minute.

UK Travel Agents such as JET2 or TUI offer a trip in Tenerife called 'Teide by Night' (which you can also book locally) and which is aimed mainly at normal tourists (and which we have done in the past), and now also includes viewing through telescopes, or you can book a trip more aimed at astronomy enthusiasts such as with 'Night Skies Tenerife' or 'Vulcano Teide'. 

On my last visit to Tenerife before my most recent, I booked an Observatory and Stargazing trip with local trip operator Vulcano Teide, but thy cancelled at the last minute supposedly due to poor weather, but around sunset the summit of Mt Teide was clearly visible from Playa de Las Americas (where we were staying), indicating that weather conditions would have been ok. To make matters worse they only tried to contact me regarding the cancellation via an email which I did not receive, so we waited over an hour for their coach which did not turn up, during which time a coach for the 'Teide by Night' trip pulled up at the same pickup point, so clearly their trip was running. 

This September after the poor experience with Vulcano Teide we booked a trip with Night Skies Tenerife, on the day of the trip weather conditions in Playa de Las Americas had admittedly been a bit variable, but in the afternoon, it had started to brighten up, so I was optimistic that skies would be clear up on the mountain after sunset. However only ½ hour before our pickup time, I was contacted by Kieran of Night Skies Tenerife to say they had cancelled the trip because they could not guarantee clear skies. I was later to find out from someone who had been on a Teide by Night trip the same day, that their trip had gone ahead, that they had good views. The only alternative date that Night Skies Tenerife could offer us whilst we were still in Tenerife was 25 September, however a hurricane (which did not materialise although it did rain quite a bit) was subsequently forecast for that date, so not surprisingly it got cancelled again.

With hindsight I made a mistake by booking the trip several weeks before going to Tenerife, and my advice would be to leave making any booking until you have had chance to look at the weather outlook in the Mt Teide area on the day. Don’t be misled into thinking that you will be above the clouds and get clear skies every night, YOU DON’T, although the percentage of nights with clear skies is probably a lot greater than in the U.K. It also appears to me that the Teide by Night trips offered by the U.K. holiday tour operators appear to go ahead unless the weather is particularly bad, and those by Night Skies Tenerife and Vulcan Teide get cancelled if there is less than about a 50% chance of clear skies. As mentioned, the latter two will offer you an alternative date if the trip gets cancelled, but often this will be for a date after you have returned home.

I accept that I have probably been unduly unlucky on the last 2 occasions, I seem to bring the rain with me wherever I go, how may U.K. tourists can say that they have been in Luxor Egypt when it rained. However I am now thinking along the lines that the best solution to do a bit of observing whilst in Tenerife in future, would be to book a couple of nights out of a 2 week stay in Tenerife at the Parador Hotel up on Mt Teide, and bring a telescope of my own, I know that some SGL member such as GavStar stop there on a regular basis.

I am more of a planetary observer, so did have some thoughts of getting a scope such as a Takahashi 100 DZ to take out there (also maybe use for the 2024 Mexico eclipse rather than my cheap Opticstar 80 mm Refractor), but worried as to how easy it would be to transport such a scope out there, in particular the risk of it getting damaged on the aircraft, and would be interested to hear about any experiences and/or advice from other SGL members.

John  

Edited October 3, 2022 by johnturley

[Live_Steam_Mad]

Would La Palma (Airport code SPC) be a better choice than Tenerife?

Regards,

AG

[johnturley]

12 hours ago, Live_Steam_Mad said:

Would La Palma (Airport code SPC) be a better choice than Tenerife?

Regards,

AG

Not really, not much tourist infrastructure there, or direct flights from the U.K.

John

[Adam J]

On 03/10/2022 at 06:04, Live_Steam_Mad said:

Would La Palma (Airport code SPC) be a better choice than Tenerife?

Regards,

AG

My research says that while darker la palmer is less likely to have clear sky's than Tenerife. Teide is at 7000ft or so, higher then the highest point in la palmer so is more accessible. Also I lost interest in the Tenerife stargazing trips when I saw that they where using some very  cheap looking equipment. 

[johnturley]

18 hours ago, Adam J said:

My research says that while darker la palmer is less likely to have clear sky's than Tenerife. Teide is at 7000ft or so, higher then the highest point in la palmer so is more accessible. Also I lost interest in the Tenerife stargazing trips when I saw that they where using some very  cheap looking equipment. 

The summit of Mt Teide is actually around 3,700 metres (12,000 ft), but the Parador Hotel is situated on a plateau below the summit at around 2,300 metres (7,000 ft), it's still very cold at night up there though.

As far as I am aware there is no equivalent sort of accommodation available for the tourist on La Palma, when I went to La Palma as part of the Halley's comet trip in 1986, I understood there to be only 3 hotels on the island, all situated near the coast around Santa Cruz de La Palma, although I am sure that there are a lot more now. 

When I went on my last successful stargazing trip in 2016, if I remember rightly, they had a Vixen Refractor (around 4-5 in), and a Skywatcher scope. Vulcano Teide's website now appears to show a Celestron CPC, and when I asked Kieran of Night Skies Tenerife, he said that they had a couple of Celestron scopes. There are no telescopes permanently rigged up for these trips, so they have to bring something fairly portable with them to rig up. I wouldn't really expect to see anything better than I can see through my telescopes at home on Jupiter and Saturn, part of the attraction is to view the spectacular section of the milky way through Sagittarius, which you can't see properly from the U.K.  

My problem however has been the reliability of the companies offering these observing trips, it appears that some of them don't want to take the risk if it might be cloudy, and appear to be too ready and willing to cancel the trip if the weather forecast is not ideal, hence my thoughts about booking 2 nights at the Parador Hotel out of a 10-14 night stay on Tenerife, and bringing a telescope of my own. 

Edited October 5, 2022 by johnturley

[Adam J]

2 hours ago, johnturley said:

The summit of Mt Teide is actually around 3,700 metres (12,000 ft), but the Parador Hotel is situated on a plateau below the summit at around 2,300 metres (7,000 ft), it's still very cold at night up there though.

As far as I am aware there is no equivalent sort of accommodation available for the tourist on La Palma, when I went to La Palma as part of the Halley's comet trip in 1986, I understood there to be only 3 hotels on the island, all situated near the coast around Santa Cruz de La Palma, although I am sure that there are a lot more now. 

When I went on my last successful stargazing trip in 2016, if I remember rightly, they had a Vixen Refractor (around 4-5 in), and a Skywatcher scope. Vulcano Teide's website now appears to show a Celestron CPC, and when I asked Kieran of Night Skies Tenerife, he said that they had a couple of Celestron scopes. There are no telescopes permanently rigged up for these trips, so they have to bring something fairly portable with them to rig up. I wouldn't really expect to see anything better than I can see through my telescopes at home on Jupiter and Saturn, part of the attraction is to view the spectacular section of the milky way through Sagittarius, which you can't see properly from the U.K.  

My problem however has been the reliability of the companies offering these observing trips, it appears that some of them don't want to take the risk if it might be cloudy, and appear to be too ready and willing to cancel the trip if the weather forecast is not ideal, hence my thoughts about booking 2 nights at the Parador Hotel out of a 10-14 night stay on Tenerife, and bringing a telescope of my own. 

Yes I did not mean the peak of the mountain I meant the national park. 

[icpn]

note that the seeing at the Parador is quite bad because the lava heats up during the day and releases that heat at night so if you think you are going to be doing planetary work then it might not be so good.

[Cjg]

I was in Tenerife in November 2020 and did the 'Teide by Night' trip booked locally during my week long stay, partly to have a look around the area. They had 2 CPC 9.25 scopes, one pointing at Jupiter and one at the moon.

At the time, the Parador was fully booked up for months ahead.

Could you get a fly drive holiday and have a nice villa with a pool at say Vilaflor? Booking.com has a few interesting properties? A small frac on a lightweight head and you'll see all the reasonable stuff in Sagittarius?

Good luck!

Chris

[petevasey]

Hi, guys,

I had a couple of holidays in La Palma several years ago, staying at 'Casa Rosabel'.   Although the original proprietor sadly died some years ago, they still do astro holidays.   'Only' 640 m (2100 ft) above sea level, but excellent views.  See my web site page for a description of the holidays.  As you will see we had excellent conditions for the first trip and although the weather was most unkind the second time, still had a marvellous holiday.  Direct flights from the UK are available with Tui from Gatwick and Manchester.  For example March 7th to 14th 2024 coincides with a new Moon on 10th, so ideal for galaxy hunters.  Or for Milky Way, August or September.  Even July worth considering - so far South you can get 7 hours of full darkness.  For accommodation there are many self catering villas around 2000 ft above sea level along the West coast North of Casa Rosabel.  An interesting one is Casa La Atalaya del Mar in Puntagorda  28°45'55.23"N,  17°59'17.27"W.  On Google Earth the layout looks very promising for observing.  And just a mile from there is a road running almost directly up the mountain to 2030m (6660 ft).  Here is a link to a kmz Google Earth file showing the route.  It is very steep, a decently powerful hire car recommended!  Or if prepared to take the main road which circumnavigates the huge caldera there are a number of possible viewpoints.  Here is a good one (another Google Earth link) at 2298 m (7540 ft.)  The highest point, accessible from the Observatory area, is Roque de Los Muchachos at 2426 m (7960 ft.)  See pic below.

Cheers, Peter

Edited March 9, 2023 by petevasey