The Sun: View from Canary Islands
Astrophotographer Marina Prol Franco: "The Sun & INTA Maspalomas in early March and late September, from my home. I can watch the Sun set right behind the antennas of the Canary Islands Space Center. This time, it lined up with the Earth Observation antenna. I tried to capture the moment with my solar telescope, but with the Sun so low, the atmospheric turbulence, and those clouds 😌it didn’t turn out quite the way I hoped. I’ll keep trying though, because sometimes the journey is more interesting than the destination."
The National Institute for Aerospace Technology "Esteban Terradas"
Spanish: Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial or INTA
Maspalomas Station is an INTA-operated, ESTRACK radio antenna ground station for communication with spacecraft located at the southern area of Gran Canaria island, on the INTA campus. It is situated on the Montaña Blanca hill and is visible from the coastal resort of Meloneras, close to Maspalomas. It was originally established in the 1960s to support NASA's human spaceflight program.
The European Space Agency's tracking station network—Estrack—is a global system of ground stations providing links between satellites in orbit and the European Space Operations Center (ESOC), Darmstadt, Germany. The core Estrack network has six stations in six countries.
The Canary Islands, also known informally as the Canaries, are a Spanish region, autonomous community and archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean. At their closest point to the African mainland, they are 100 kilometers (62 miles) west of Morocco and the Western Sahara. La Palma, also known as La isla bonita and historically San Miguel de La Palma, is the most northwesterly island of the Canary Islands, Spain.
Image Credit: Marina Prol Franco
Marina's website: https://www.marinaprol.com
Gran Canaria, Canary Islands (Spain)
Release Date: March 8, 2026
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