Paint the Sky with Stars

In the early evening sky of La Palma, Canary Islands, stars of Ursa Major (Big Bear) appear on the left while the Milky Way in the constellations Cassiopeia and Cepheus is captured on the right. Between the two Polaris and rest of Ursa minor (Little Bear) rest in the middle toward the north. Below the deep blue sky is the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on the top of La Palma, 2400 meters above see level. There are about a dozen major telescopes on this excellent observing site including the 2.5m Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) on the right side of this view. INT was the first telescope on the mountain in early 1980s and was once the telescope of Royal Greenwich observatory and was moved to La Palma under an ideal sky. The observatory on the left houses the 1.2m Mercator telescope. And more to the left the open dome observatory is the 2-meter full robotic Liverpool Telescope. The title of this image is the name of a song by Irish musician Enya based on lyrics by Roma Ryan.