Roque de los Muchachos Observatory

Roque de los Muchachos Observatory is an astronomical observatory located in the municipality of Garafía on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands. The observatory site is operated by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias which is based on nearby Tenerife, and it is part of European Northern Observatory.The seeing statistics make it the second best location for optical and infrared astronomy in the Northern Hemisphere, after Mauna Kea Observatory, Hawaii.

The observatory started with the Isaac Newton Telescope, which was moved to La Palma from the Royal Greenwich Observatory site at Herstmonceux Castle in Sussex, England in 1979. The move was beset with difficulties, and it is widely recognized that it would have been cheaper to have built a new telescope rather than moving an existing one.The observatory was initiated in Santa Cruz de La Palma by representatives from Spain, Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom.

Telescopes
MAGIC (telescope)                   17 m gamma-ray imaging Cherenkov telescope
Gran Telescopio Canarias        10.4 m reflecting telescope
William Herschel Telescope       4.2 m reflecting telescope
Telescopio Nazionale Galileo     3.5 m reflecting telescope
Nordic Optical Telescope           2.56 m reflecting telescope
Isaac Newton Telescope            2.5 m reflecting telescope
Liverpool Telescope                  2.0 m robotic telescope (also reflecting)
Mercator Telescope                  1.2 m reflecting telescope
Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope   1.0 m refracting vacuum solar telescope
Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope     1.0 m reflecting telescope
Dutch Open Telescope             0.45 m reflecting solar telescope
Carlsberg Meridian Telescope  0.18 m refracting telescope
SuperWASP                              5 wide angle cameras with 0.11 m diameter lenses
HEGRA                                     17 Cherenkov telescopes, 3 m diameter now dismantled