Translator: Emma Cornwell Reviewer: Ioannis Papacheimonas
Have you ever lost something and when you're looking for it
you end up finding something even more important ?
This happened to me when I was 16,
and was a key moment in my life.
Since you're all here, I'll tell you about it.
I was playing with my friends in the school playground,
and the ball got stuck on the roof. And since I've always been acrobatic,
I went up on the roof to find it.
Do you know what I found there?
I found a magnifying glass as big as my hand.
I was convinced this magnifying glass was waiting for me there.
I knew straight away what I would do with it:
I wanted to build a telescope.
You'll wander:
Where did this 16 year old get the idea to build a telescope?
Well, it came to me a few years before when I read a short book
by Soviet publishers 'MIR' which showed the constellations,
and more importantly, how to see them through a small telescope.
With this book and my friend Juanfri we'd go to the edge of town,
and with the bicycles headlights we'd read the information in the book.
I remember that was the first time
I identified the North Star and the Big Dipper in the sky.
I think it was this moment,
- with the book -
that first sparked my interest in astronomy,
or perhaps later at 16 when I started messing around with magnifying glasses.
So you can imagine how my imagination ignited
when I found the magnifying glass on the roof.
With it in my hands, I instantly knew what the telescope would be like.
This telescope was a plastic pipe with the magnifying glass at the end.
The shafts were plumbing pipes,
and the tripod was made from an old wash basin,
which I salvaged from my Grandma's things.
For the welding I used super glue,
for nuts and bolts I used wire and tape - bound very tightly!
Do you know how long the telescope lasted?
As long as the super glue and tape lasted.
The magnifying glass fell to the floor and broke into a thousand pieces.
You can't imagine my thrill when I built that telescope.
It was endless.
As endless as the number of questions going around my head
as to how I could improve it.
The telescope allowed me to see the moon like never before,
even though I'd already been messing around with curved glass
which I would fill with water to make images.
But it was this providential magnifying glass from the school roof
which allowed me to build this compact functional unit.
In my family, I became known as the magnifying glass handyman,
and a cousin of mine from France, who knew about my hobby,
came to my town on holiday, and brought a book with him -
a very well-read book with a blue cover
which showed a wooden telescope in white.
Its title: “La construction du telescope d'amateur” by Jean Texereau.
I'm not going to translate because it's obvious.
(Laughter)
This book excited me so much,
these poor-quality images in black and white,
the hand-drawn diagrams, so beautiful, exquisite,
the formulas, equations, data which I didn't understand,
but were simple in the end.
Everything was explained in the book, and so I decided
to polish up a 20 cm mirror and build a wooden telescope
like the one in the book.
It was all sorted.
But I never started this telescope.
Compulsory military service was awaiting me instead,
- many of you won't be familiar with this concept -
and I had to leave town.
After my period of service, I became immersed in adult life,
in all these different occupational constellations
from which you earn your living.
The first of these: bookseller
I set up a small bookshop in town which never took off.
I expanded into stationary, school things and that didn't work out either,
so I started selling toys
and in the end the bookshop ended up a video shop.
(Laughter)
Yes, that place where movies used to be
before they all went onto the internet.
I then became a painter-decorator,
a job I did for 9 years,
and which wasn't totally alien to me
as from an early age I would copy my brother
and I learnt how to paint pictures.
And just like that,
the world of colour and creativity opened up to me,
and has been a big part of my life ever since.
Until one day,
almost without meaning to,
this world lead me to what is my current profession
which I've been doing for the last 20 years - graphic designer.
And all of this after so much career-shifting,
being unemployed and things not going your way.
Today this is called reinventing yourself. (Laughter)
I reinvented myself bit by bit,
until I finally decided at 35
to take my childhood dream - the one I abandoned when I was 18 -
and make it a reality by building my own telescope.
And do you know what I did?
I bought an incredible 30 cm mirror
and I started building a telescope made out of wood.
When it was working thereabouts, I decided to build a metal one.
I chose metal because I believed then
that a real telescope should be made of iron,
that it should be solid and sturdy.
But I had no idea where to start - I'd never worked with metal before,
and thought it an unworkable and dangerous material.
Those sparks that fly from the saw when you cut through iron,
it's enough to put anyone off! (Laughter)
and what I can I say about the flashes from welding,
- your eyes shrivel up like raisins -
and there is really nothing that relieves the stinging.
But I learnt how to work metal by watching the experts,
mainly a blacksmith called Julian
who was very skilled with iron,
and Vicente who would cut me parts using his lathe and milling machine.
I also remember that at that time
I spent a vast amount of time on the internet troubleshooting,
trying to see how other people had solved problems similar to mine.
I also knew that I'd have to investigate as many avenues as possible
to find those nuggets of information
that would let me take the next step towards achieving my dream.
Since I live in a small town,
it was easy to find suitable materials,
mainly from the scrapyard in the town of Puebla de Almoradiel.
It's a magnificent scrapyard
which could give those big city scrapyards a run for their money any day.
(Laughter)
You can find anything and everything in this scrapyard:
You can find archaic tractors, crushed cars, battered chippers,
completely obselete machinery.
Everything, except telescopes.
(Laughter)
You end up scaling these mountains of metal,
mentally dismantling the jumbles of scrap metal,
trying to find a shaft, cogs or bearing which could be of use.
I can assure you that the first builds
I made with these materials were truly monstrous,
and earnt me a well-deserved reputation
as the 'odd-ball' of the workshop.
I carried on practicing with these materials however,
until I had enough experience
to fully plan out the telescope I had so longed for.
I'd build it with the 30 cm mirror I had bought,
and it would be completely made of iron weighing 500 kg.
But of course 500 kg is not easy to transport from A to B,
in your car, like an everyday object.
So I decided I'd have to build a small building
that could contain it and protect it. (Laughter)
A small building from which I could observe...
I think you'll have guessed that I build an observatory!
So now we'll move from the 'Metal Age' into the 'Cement Age'.
(Laughter)
I now had to try my hand at brick laying.
On the 3rd of May, 1999, I, the handy-man (Laughter)
had the idea of taking apart an old shed of the family's,
and with a pickaxe and shovel,
I laid the foundations, built the supporting structure and walls.
In October of that year it was finished and painted, as you're seeing now.
Looking back at that summer it was truly wonderful,
so full of promise and excitement.
But that summer was also tough, with long days
requiring immense effort I had never dreamt of.
If I had been aware of the difficulties I might never have started.
And don't even mention the astronomical aches and pains I endured!
(Laughter)
So you have the building, the telescope,
But now for the difficult part:
How on earth do you build a dome?
Moreover, how on earth do you build one that has openings
so the telescope can stick out.
So I started again.
I started experimenting with materials, seeing how they bent.
asking everyone around me for advice,
until 2-3 months later it was finished.
I remember the year 1999 as the year
I studied a super intensive course in astrobrickwork.
(Laughter)
Of course there were people who helped out.
Above all my family, who patiently witnessed
how this far-fetched idea of mine progressed.
I also had Julian the blacksmith's help,
who shared his equipment and knowledge
aside from his straightforward and friendly manner
which to me is priceless.
From 1999 onwards the years flew by at an astounding speed,
I built more domes, more telescopes, and more instruments,
until I reached the point were the observatory was almost finished,
and I saw the need to extent the scope of the project,
further than just individual use.
So in 2007, together with Nacho, I created the AstroHita Foundation,
and shortly after Leonor and Fernando joined, who is an engineer,
Isidro who helped with the administrative side
and Droy, our dear Droy who developed the software
for all the instruments and equipment we developed in the observatory.
Thanks to them my little observatory
became a true Astronomy Complex:
The Hita Astronomy Complex
where people study and carry out scientific research today.
We are currently collaborating with the Andalusian Institute of Astrophysics,
and the research projects carried out by Professor Jose Luis Órtiz,
and also with the University of Huelva
in research carried out by Professor Jose María Madiedo.
I would like to thank them both for putting their trust in us.
It is against this backdrop of success and achievement at the observatory,
that the Makemake breakthrough came along in 2011.
You'll be wondering: who or what is Makemake?
It's a dwarf planet at the very edge of our solar system,
whose closest relative is Pluto, but is a quarter the size.
Makemake made history for our little observatory
in how, for the first time,
we could obtain data accurate enough to be used in the scientific community.
This data was used by the head investigator
to make a prediction about an astronomical phenomenon
which prompted 16 telescopes around the world to also start investigating.
2 of these were VLT telescopes with 8 metre mirrors in Chile,
2 of the biggest in the world.
The prediction and investigation were a success and lead
the investigator to publish an article in the prestigious journal NATURE.
This was the first time our observatory appeared in this journal.
In 2010 we joined the SMART project
which detects shooting stars and meteorites
- all those masses which disintegrate in Earth's atmosphere -.
In 2012, we designated a telescope to the MIDAS project
- which detects impacts on the moon -
and functions in parallel with 5 other telescopes in Andalusia.
In 2013 the MIDAS project detected the greatest impact on record
directly on the surface of the moon.
When the investigator published the results,
NASA showed interest in the location of the impact.
And the spacecraft orbitting the moon - the LRO - photographed the new crater,
a beautiful crater which is still seen today adorning the moon's surface.
In spite of all this, I am still a graphic designer
which I how I earn my living,
and my partners in crime Leonor and Fernando,
similarly have their own jobs outside of the Hita Observatory.
We aim to sustain and fund the observatory through educational activities
and not by personal means.
As everything we'd done for the observatory had been
with our effort, enthusiasm, dedication and an astronomical number of man-hours.
To this day we've never had any substantial economic support,
and we always say when we marvel
at all that we have built and achieved:
'we did all this with no financial help, can you imagine if we had money ?'.
What would it have been like with financial backing?
because we were never short of ideas, projects nor enthusiasm.
One of the most important things in the making of the observatory
has been sharing it with professionals, craftsmen, researchers, friends,
all united by a passion for the cosmos,
which in reality is no different
from a passion to drive knowledge forwards
the passion of knowledge.
And also, to another end, it is the passion to realise your dreams,
in my case, a dream I have wanted to fulfill since childhood.
It is inevitable that a process like this, over so many years,
will see you make many false starts before you reach your ultimate goal,
as this is part of the continuous process of trial and error.
But in spite of all the wrong turnings, the best decision I ever made
was to build an observatory,
as it became more than just a hobby,
and gave meaning to my very existence.
Ultimately, it became
a life-long project, a life project.
You must agree with me
that a life projectless, without goals to achieve
would be a sad one, am I right?
Thank you very much.
(Applause)