Roque de los Muchachos Observatory

The building of the observatory traces to 1969, with the start of the Northern Hemisphere Observatory project.[2] After ten years of research on the site there is big international agreement with several nations to establish an international Observatory at La Palma.[3]

The former Royal Greenwich Observatory at Herstmonceux, which lead to a search for a better location for the large telescopes

The observatory began operation around 1984 with the Isaac Newton Telescope, which was moved to La Palma from the Royal Greenwich Observatory site at Herstmonceux Castle in Sussex, England. The move was troubled, and it is widely recognized that it would have been cheaper to build a new telescope on-site rather than to move an existing one.

The observatory was first staffed by representatives from Spain, Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom. Other countries which became involved later include Germany, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland, Iceland, and the United States.

The observatory was officially inaugurated on June 29, 1985, by the Spanish royal family and six European heads of state. Four helicopter pads were built at the observatory to allow the dignitaries to arrive in comfort. The observatory has expanded considerably over time, with the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope opened in 1987, the Nordic Optical Telescope in 1988 and several smaller solar or specialized telescopes; the Galileo National Telescope opened in 1998 and the Gran Telescopio Canarias opened in 2006, with its full aperture in 2009.

A fire on the mountainside in 1997 damaged one of the gamma-ray telescopes, but subsequent fires in September 2005 and August 2009[4] did no serious damage to buildings or telescopes.

In 2016, the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias and Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory signed an agreement to host Cherenkov Telescope Array’s northern hemisphere array at the ORM.

In 2016, the observatory was announced as the second-choice location for the Thirty Meter Telescope, in the event that the Mauna Kea site is not feasible.[5]

The Spanish island is host to the premiere collection of telescopes and observatories from around the World, for the northern hemisphere excluding the Hawaiian islands which has a different mix of telescopes. However, even the southern hemisphere there is no equal to the 10.4 meter Grand Telescope Canarias, which has the largest single aperture for an astronomical observatory in the World.

• FACT
• Carlsberg Meridian Telescope (1984-2013)
• Dutch Open Telescope
• Galileo National Telescope
• Gran Telescopio Canarias (2007- )
• HEGRA
• Isaac Newton Telescope
• Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope
• Liverpool Telescope (2003- )[6]
• MAGIC
• MASCARA
• Mercator Telescope
• Nordic Optical Telescope
• Swedish Solar Telescope
• Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP)
• William Herschel Telescope

• 
  Several of the helicopter pads built for the inauguration ceremony can be seen under the now dismantled HEGRA array
• 
  Telescopes at the observatory at sunset, from left to right: the NOT, the WHT, the DOT, the SST, the Mercator Telescope and the ING
• 
  Picture of the 10m Gran Telescopio Canarias building under construction in March 2003
• 
  Picture of the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT)
• 
  Large-Sized-Telescope 1 of the Cherenkov Telescope Array

360 degrees panorama as taken on 2011 January 28

• Roque de los Muchachos
• La Palma
• Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias
• Teide Observatory
• Isaac Newton Group
• Astronomical seeing
• Gran Telescopio Canarias
• List of space telescopes (Another important source of astronomical observations in this period)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Roque de los Muchachos Observatory.

• Observatory website (English)
• Current weather and astronomical conditions
• Panoramic 360 Observatory
• Travel information