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Tenerife

Former monarchiesIslands of MacaronesiaIslands of the Canary IslandsMiocene volcanismPages with Spanish IPA
Pleistocene volcanismPliocene volcanismTenerife
Tenerife sentinel 2
Tenerife sentinel 2

Tenerife (; Spanish: [teneˈɾife]; formerly spelled Teneriffe) is the largest and most populous island of the Canary Islands. It is home to 42.9% of the total population of the archipelago. With a land area of 2,034.38 square kilometres (785.48 sq mi) and a population of 948,815 inhabitants as of January 2023, it is also the most populous island of Spain and of Macaronesia.Approximately five million tourists visit Tenerife each year; it is the most visited island in the archipelago. It is one of the most important tourist destinations in Spain and the world, hosting one of the world's largest carnivals, the Carnival of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The capital of the island, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, is also the seat of the island council (cabildo insular). That city and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria are the co-capitals of the autonomous community of the Canary Islands. The two cities are both home to governmental institutions, such as the offices of the presidency and the ministries. This has been the arrangement since 1927, when the Crown ordered it. (After the 1833 territorial division of Spain, until 1927, Santa Cruz de Tenerife was the sole capital of the Canary Islands). Santa Cruz contains the modern Auditorio de Tenerife, the architectural symbol of the Canary Islands.The island is home to the University of La Laguna. Founded in 1792 in San Cristóbal de La Laguna, it is the oldest university in the Canaries. The city of La Laguna is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is the second most populous city on the island, and the third most populous in the archipelago. It was the capital of the Canary Islands before Santa Cruz replaced it in 1833. Tenerife is served by two airports; Tenerife North Airport and Tenerife South Airport. Teide National Park, located in the center of the island, is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It includes Mount Teide, which has the highest elevation in Spain, and the highest elevation among all the islands in the Atlantic Ocean. It is also the third-largest volcano in the world, when measured from its base. Another geographical feature of the island, the Macizo de Anaga (massif), has been designated as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve since 2015. Tenerife also has the largest number of endemic species in Europe.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Tenerife (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Tenerife
Carretera del Teide,

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Latitude Longitude
N 28.268611111111 ° E -16.605555555556 °
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Carretera del Teide
38415
Spain
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Tenerife sentinel 2
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Teide
Teide

Teide, or Mount Teide, (Spanish: El Teide, Pico del Teide, pronounced [ˈpiko ðel ˈtejðe], "Peak of Teide") is a volcano on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, Spain. Its summit (at 3,715 m (12,188 ft)) is the highest point in Spain and the highest point above sea level in the islands of the Atlantic. If measured from the ocean floor, its height of 7,500 m (24,600 ft) makes Teide the third-highest volcano in the world, and is described by UNESCO and NASA as Earth's third-tallest volcanic structure. Teide's elevation above sea level makes Tenerife the tenth highest island in the world. Teide started forming 170,000 years ago due to volcanic activity following a catastrophic landslide. Teide's base is situated in Las Cañadas crater (the remains of an older, eroded, extinct volcano) at a height of around 2,190 m (7,190 ft) above sea level. Teide is an active volcano: its most recent eruption occurred in late 1909 from the El Chinyero vent on the northwestern Santiago rift. The United Nations Committee for Disaster Mitigation designated Teide a Decade Volcano because of its history of destructive eruptions and its proximity to several large towns, of which the closest are Garachico, Icod de los Vinos and Puerto de la Cruz. Teide, Pico Viejo and Montaña Blanca form the Central Volcanic Complex of Tenerife. The volcano and its surroundings make up Teide National Park, which has an area of 18,900 hectares (47,000 acres) and was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2007. Teide is the most visited natural wonder of Spain, the most visited national park in Spain and Europe and – by 2015 – the eighth most visited in the world, with some 3 million visitors yearly. In 2016, it was visited by 4,079,823 visitors and tourists, reaching a historical record. Teide Observatory, a major international astronomical observatory, is located on the slopes of the mountain.

ESA Optical Ground Station
ESA Optical Ground Station

The ESA Optical Ground Station (OGS Telescope or ESA Space Debris Telescope) is the European Space Agency's ground based observatory at the Teide Observatory on Tenerife, Spain, built for the observation of space debris. OGS is part of the Artemis experiment and is operated by the IAC (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias) and Ataman Science S.L.U. The observatory is a 1-meter Coudé telescope with a field of view of 0.7 degrees, supported by an English cross-axial mount inside a dome 12.5-meters in diameter. Its main purposes are: to be the optical ground station of the Artemis telecommunications satellite (the project from which the telescope takes its name) to survey space debris in different orbits around the Earth, to conduct surveys and follow-up observations of near-Earth objects as part of ESA's Space Situational Awareness programme, and to make scientific astronomical night observations.It is equipped with a cryogenically cooled mosaic CCD-Camera of 4k×4k pixels. The detection threshold is between 19th and 21st magnitude, which corresponds to a capability to detect space debris objects as small as 10 cm in the geostationary ring. As a large part of the observation time is dedicated to space debris surveys, in particular the observation of space debris in the geostationary ring and in geostationary transfer orbits, the term ESA Space Debris Telescope became used very frequently. Space debris surveys are carried out every month, centered on New Moon.Since 2006, the telescope has also been used as a receiver station for quantum communication experiments (such as testing Bell's inequality, quantum cryptography, and quantum teleportation), with the sender station being 143 km away in the observatory on La Palma. This is possible because this telescope can be tilted to a near-horizontal position to point it at La Palma, which many large astronomical telescopes are unable to do.