Places · Observatory
Teide Observatory
A solar observatory first: the GREGOR and European Solar telescopes watch the Sun from 2,400 m, alongside night-time robotic instruments.
The sky from here
Measured at these coordinates the sky is zone 5: suburban, which is Bortle 5–6 and a naked-eye limit of about magnitude 5.2–6.0. The Milky Way is invisible or nearly so. Clouds are lit from below. You can read a newspaper outside on a clear night.
Of the 110 Messier objects, 15 are an unaided-eye target from a sky this dark, 82 are comfortable in 10×50s and 85 in a 130mm reflector. You would have to get roughly 44 km north-west before the sky reaches Bortle 2.
Every night of the year reaches full astronomical darkness at this latitude; the Sun always gets its eighteen degrees below the horizon, which places much further from the equator cannot say.
The centre of the galaxy reaches 33° at its highest, which puts the brightest part of the Milky Way clear of the horizon murk without ever being overhead. Of the 110 Messier objects, 2 never set from here and every one of them rises at some point in the year.
Triangulum Galaxy, Pleiades and Ring Nebula pass close to the zenith from this latitude — an object at the zenith is being seen through the least air it will ever be seen through, and the difference against the same object low in the south is not subtle.
Bode's Galaxy and Cigar Galaxy never set from this latitude, so they are available on any clear night of the year rather than for one season of it.
Read at 28.30°N 16.51°W. Darkness is estimated rather than measured; everything else follows from the latitude and holds along the whole parallel. How accurate this is.
Nearby
Questions
What part of the sky never rises at Teide Observatory?
Everything south of declination −62°. From 28.3°N that is a cap 28° in radius centred on the south celestial pole, which is 6.0% of the whole celestial sphere. It is out of reach permanently rather than seasonally: no time of year and no instrument brings it above the horizon. The matching 6.0% around the north celestial pole is the same geometry inverted, and never sets.
How many hours of true darkness does Teide Observatory get?
10 hours 51 minutes on the best night, around 21 December, falling to 6 hours 56 minutes around 21 June. The measure is astronomical darkness — the Sun a full eighteen degrees under — not simply the hours between sunset and sunrise. Every night of the year gets there eventually, which is the quiet advantage of not being any further from the equator than this.
When is the Milky Way best from Teide Observatory?
Mid-June at its highest, with a workable season either side of it running from about May into September. Because 28.3°N keeps full astronomical darkness all year, the whole of that season is usable, which is not the case for observers much further from the equator, who lose the peak of it to summer twilight.
How far is Teide Observatory from the other sites on this map?
Roque de los Muchachos is the nearest thing to it here — 144 km to the west. That is also the nearest other observatory, with the next one 2,950 km beyond it. Measured as the great circle between coordinates, which is the shortest path across the surface and rarely the one you could travel.