Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma, Canary Islands, September 28, 2011..

Tenerife, Canary Islands, September 25, 2011: a small team of Suffolk University students huddles tensely around the CCD camera control computer on the 0.5-m MONS telescope of the Teide Observatory, 2500 m (8,200 ft) above sea level at a dark-sky site located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km (60 miles) west of the Western Sahara.

The Mons Telescope at the Teide Observatory

View of the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory

Will the sky remain clear? Is the shutter open? Are all the instrument settings correct? Will they be able to find Uranus and determine its atmospheric composition by spectral analysis? Is that source next to the planet a satellite or a background star?

The Star Queen, the core of the Eagle Nebula (April 2011)

This is not a scene from a postgraduate thesis project, but from a science for non-science majors undergraduate course at Suffolk University Madrid Campus, in collaboration with the Spanish IAC, to give non-science major students a first-hand experience of observing with the latest equipment at a large professional observatory.

On September 28, 2011, students enrolled in the Science-for-non-Science-Majors course "Astronomy II: stars and galaxies" (SCI 112), offered at Suffolk University Madrid Campus, will fly to the island of La Palma to tour the world-class Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, home of the world's largest telescope, the GTC (with a primary mirror that measures 34 feet across). The science/adventure field trip includes 36 hours of astronomical observations with the Mons Telescope at the Teide Observatory in Tenerife (the largest of the Canary Islands), climbing the world’s third largest volcano (Mount Teide, 12,198 ft), and exploring the Parque Nacional del Teide (named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO on June 29th, 2007).

GTC dome at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, La Palma

The world's largest single mirror, optical telescope: GTC

Primary targets for this observation run are galaxies, nebulae, clusters and, of course, supernova hunting. Two supernovae are currently visible from Tenerife: SN 2011fe, a Type Ia supernova in the face-on spiral M 101, the Pinwheel Galaxy, and SN 2011dh, a Type II supernova in the famous Whirlpool Galaxy (M 51). Comet C/2009 P1 (Garrad) will also be visible from Tenerife during the field trip.