The European Solar Telescope

Quintero Noda, C.; Schlichenmaier, R.; Bellot Rubio, L.R.; Löfdahl, M.G.; Khomenko, E.; Jurcak, J.; Leenaarts, J.; Kuckein, C.; González Manrique, S.J.; Gunár, S.; Nelson, C.J.; Tziotziou, K.; Tsiropoula, G.; Aulanier, G.; Aboudarham, J.; Allegri, D.; Team, The EST

Abstract

The European Solar Telescope (EST) is a project aimed at studying the magnetic connectivity of the solar atmosphere, from the deep photosphere to the upper chromosphere. Its design combines the knowledge and expertise gathered by the European solar physics community during the construction and operation of state-of-the-art solar telescopes operating in visible and near-infrared wavelengths: the Swedish 1m Solar Telescope, the German Vacuum Tower Telescope and GREGOR, the French Télescope Héliographique pour l’Étude du Magnétisme et des Instabilités Solaires, and the Dutch Open Telescope. With its 4.2 m primary mirror and an open configuration, EST will become the most powerful European ground-based facility to study the Sun in the coming decades in the visible and near-infrared bands. EST uses the most innovative technological advances: the first adaptive secondary mirror ever used in a solar telescope, a complex multi-conjugate adaptive optics with deformable mirrors that form part of the optical design in a natural way, a polarimetrically compensated telescope design that eliminates the complex temporal variation and wavelength dependence of the telescope Mueller matrix, and an instrument suite containing several (etalon-based) tunable imaging spectropolarimeters and several integral field unit spectropolarimeters. This publication summarises some fundamental science questions that can be addressed with the telescope, together with a complete description of its major subsystems.

Citation

Quintero Noda, C., Schlichenmaier, R., Bellot Rubio, L., Löfdahl, M., Khomenko, E., Jurcak, J., …Team, T. E. (2022). The European Solar Telescope. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 666, Article A21. https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202243867

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 14, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Sep 30, 2022
• Publication Date: 2022-10
• Deposit Date: Sep 29, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 8, 2022
• Journal: Astronomy and astrophysics.
• Print ISSN: 0004-6361
• Electronic ISSN: 1432-0746
• Publisher: EDP Sciences
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 666
• Article Number: A21
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202243867
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1190650