Teide Observatory

The tour ends with the sun itself. Through two solar telescopes you watch sunspots, flares and the bright edge of the solar disc.

Before that comes a walk among the white domes and towers on the ridge at Izaña, 2,390 m up, where telescopes from Germany, France, Italy, the UK and the European Space Agency share the same air. A guide takes a small group between them, explains what each one studies and leads you inside one of the instruments.

The site has a real record. Teide-1, the first brown dwarf found, was picked out here in 1995 with the 80 cm IAC-80 telescope, and Brian May helped build a building on the grounds to study interplanetary dust. The views from the observatory grounds are worth the drive on their own.

• Visits are by guided tour, booked ahead. Tours can be rescheduled, so leave slack in your plans.
• Same-day booking is possible, which makes the tour a fallback when the Teide cable car is shut.
• The tour runs a little over two hours and is a crash course in basic astronomy; younger children may find it heavy going.
• Bring sunscreen, a warm layer and walking shoes: the tour walks the grounds between the telescopes at 2,390 m.

You need your own car. The drive up from Las Américas takes about an hour and a half, and the views on the climb invite stops. The road brings you onto the ridge at Izaña, where an asphalt car park sits about 100 m from the observatory in a straight line; from there the tour continues on foot across the site. The nearest bus stop, Casa del Caminero, is about 4 km away in a straight line, which rules the bus out for most visitors. An information board on the volcanoes outside Las Cañadas stands about 185 m from the observatory.

Best: a clear, bright day, at any time of year.

Avoid: frosty winter days if you are not at ease driving a mountain road.

The highlight of the tour is the sun through the solar telescopes, and sunshine at this height is high all year; in winter, light frosts are possible on the mountain.