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Astronomy Tours of the night (and day!) sky in Murcia
Look at the surface of the sun, take a tour of the stars while eating tapas on a cruise ship and much more with the English-speaking team at Murcia’s Finca Astronomica
Have you ever looked up at the sky and wondered what’s out there to see? Do you ever feel the desire to get lost, floating along the milky way? Or maybe you’re just looking for something a bit different to do this weekend?
Try out an Astronomy Tour at the Finca Astronomica in the Campo de Cartagena in Murcia! The Finca Astronomica is a place where families and friends can spend quality time together close to nature to learn about astronomy.
Not only do they organise evening activities with a bonfire, meal and telescope observations, but you can also take part in daytime sun observations!
Right now, after nearly 5 months of work, the Finca, which is supported by the Astronomy and Science Centre Foundation, is offering private observations every other day and special Astronomy Nights every Saturday, though these will be put on more often as we get closer to summer.
Day time sun observations via solar telescopes will be a regular event from May onwards, and right now are available as part of a private tour. The Foundation is also setting up a planetarium, which will be operational during the daytime, along with solar observations with telescopes for you to actually look at the surface of the sun with a specialised solar telescope.
You can hire out the Finca for events like birthday parties and wedding anniversaries, and buy handmade objects like craftwork and artwork that the staff make when they are not doing astronomy, including paintings, posters and calendars with pictures of celestial objects, wooden shelves and accessories, animal houses, handmade soaps with pure gold and silver, candles with ‘stardust’ and loads more.
What’s more, as animal lovers, they are also working on creating a mini zoo and a workshop to promote interaction with nature and an ecofriendly life style. Finca Astronomica is a place where all folks, young and old, can have good time together, and they are getting more animals every month. The animals all live in really big enclosures where people can enter to interact with them directly.
The team of astronomers at the Finca are also available to travel to other locations and perform lectures, workshops and telescope observations there. The equipment they have at their disposal includes really big telescopes for night time observations, robotic telescopes for very distant observations and astrophotography, solar telescopes for sun observations and a portable, inflatable planetarium with some great films courtesy of NASA and the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
What other astronomical activities can you do?
As well as the events at the Finca, there are specialist Astronomy Tours elsewhere in the Murcia Region, too, such as in Camposol, San Pedro del Pinatar and La Manga del Mar Menor.
One of the most incredible activities on offer is the totally unique ‘Cruise under the Stars’. It’s exactly what it sound like – a boat ride on the Mar Menor at night to see the stars in the night sky, complete with tapas and drinks.
What can you see through the telescopes?
With the optical telescopes (the ones where you literally see the objects with your own eye via the telescope), you can see the Moon, the planets of the Solar System including details such as the rings around Saturn, the Great Red Spot of Jupiter and even the moons of Jupiter, plus the difference between different stars (for example whether they are young or old), nebulas like The Great Nebula of Orion and much more!Thanks to the robotic telescopes and astrophotography gear, you can take long-time light exposures to get images of very distant objects such as other galaxies and very detailed pictures of many astronomical phenomena, like nebulas.
Solar telescopes are very specialised types of telescopes which, thanks to a variety of filters, allow us to look to the surface of the Sun and see the corona, the dark spots and the amazing sight of solar flares (explosions on the Sun, especially spectacular now, in time of great solar activity we are experiencing over next few years).
Contact the Finca Astronomica to visit for a daytime or nighttime Astronomy Tour, or book one of their cruises under the stars.
