European Solar Telescope - EST

🔭 The International Astronomical Union General Assembly 2024 was held in Cape Town, South Africa, from the 6th to the 15th of August. The 10-day event took place at the Cape Town International Convention Centre. 👏🏻

🗣️ The EST project was represented at this event through a contribution by Luis Bellot (IAA-CSIC) and Mariarita Murabito (INAF-OAR). Under the title ‘EST International School Competition: The Sun at a Glance’, they explained the concept and development of the EST infographic competition for secondary school students which was conducted as part of the PRE-EST project. ☀️🔭

Read more 👉🏻 https://tinyurl.com/ # # -IAU

The Spanish podcast Universo de Misterios recently featured an interview with Héctor Socas Navarro, the Director of the EST Foundation, in a two-part episode titled The Future European Solar Telescope. 🔭

In the interview, Socas discusses his recent appointment as the foundation's director, sharing insights into the selection process and reflecting on its personal significance for him and its impact on the project as a whole.

🗣️ The conversation also delves into fundamental concepts of solar physics, the scientific objectives of the EST, its future prospects, and its contributions to society.

🎧 Listen the full podcast (in Spanish) here 👉🏻 https://est-east.eu/est-around-world?podcast-interview-o-socas

𝘚𝘶𝘯𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘵 𝘜𝘮𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘦

#𝐒𝐮𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬: 𝐚 𝐣𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐒𝐓 𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐆𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐲 🌞

The umbra and penumbra of sunspots, the most prominent and renowned manifestations of solar activity, are separated by a boundary that has always been defined by an intensity threshold. Using data from the Hinode satellite, it was found that the umbra-penumbra boundary in stable sunspots is characterised by an invariant vertical component of the magnetic field. 🧲

The figure shows a sample of sunspots observed with the Gregor Infrared Spectrograph attached to the GREGOR telescope at the Observatorio del Teide (Tenerife, Spain) ☀️🔭. The white contours outline the umbral boundary as seen in intensity and the independently defined red contours outline the vertical component of the magnetic field.

📸 Image credit: P. Lindner (KIS), Jan Jurcak (AI, Czech Academy of Sciences), Nazaret Bello González (KIS), Rolf Schlichenmaier (KIS)

More info in the EST Solar Gallery ⬇️
🔗 https://tinyurl.com/Sunspot-Umbrae

The 16th Scientific Meeting of the Sociedad Española de Astronomía (SEA), organised jointly with the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC), was held at the Parque de las Ciencias in Granada (Spain) from 15 to 19 July 2024. 👏🏻

This morning, Luis Bellot presented the Tunable Imaging Spectropolarimeters/Fixed-Band Imagers of EST, their science goals, science requirements and the international consortium behind them. ☀️🔭

🗣️ During the talk, scheduled in the third Instrumentation session of the meeting, he also discussed the current state of the TIS/FBI development, including the optical design, the optimisation of the etalon system, and estimations of the photon budget and total exposure times needed to reach the required signal-to-noise ratios. 🙌🏻

👉🏻 https://tinyurl.com/EST-SEA-2024

📢Good news for the EST project!

The Board of Trustees made a unanimous decision regarding the candidates for the positions of director and administrator of the EST Foundation. 🙌🏻

The new director is Héctor Socas-Navarro, a staff scientist at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC). Likewise, the position of administrator of the EST Foundation has been filled by Alejandra Martín, a manager in Research and Technological Development. 👏

All the information about the professional backgrounds of both the director and administrator can be found here ⬇️

https://tinyurl.com/Director-Administrator

From 16-21 June 2024, various engineers and scientists from the EST Project Office presented the latest technical advancements of the European Solar Telescope at the SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation 2024 conference. ☀️🔭

This event, held this year in Yokohama, Japan, is among the foremost global gatherings for astronomical optics and photonics.

Through a series of talks and posters, our colleagues discussed topics such as active optics control and its integration with adaptive optics in the EST, as well as the conceptual optical design of the EST infrared Integral Field Spectropolarimeter. 🙌🏻

If you would like to know more about the other EST topics covered and their authors, you can find all the information here ⬇️

https://tinyurl.com/EST-SPIE-2024

The annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society (EAS2024) was held on the 4th and 5th of July in Padova, Italy. It was a unique opportunity for the scientific community to exchange ideas and professional experiences, while also building a network of contacts.

☀️🔭 The EST project was present through several talks related to the telescope in the instrumentation session of Symposium 15 "High-Resolution Solar Observations in the Time, Space, and Spectral Domains” 🙌🏻

The presentations were as follows:

- Miguel Núñez – ‘EST Preliminary Design: Status and Future Steps’ (Invited) and EST Telescope Expected Performance’
- Marta Belío – ‘EST Optical Design’
- Luis Bellot – ‘The Tunable Imaging Spectropolarimeters/Fixed Band Imagers for the European Solar Telescope’

More information and full programme here ⬇️
https://eas.unige.ch/EAS2024/session.jsp?id=S15

Local seeing in a telescope refers to the degradation of the image quality caused by the presence of the telescope itself. This degradation occurs due to turbulent fluctuations in the refractive index of the air, often caused by temperature gradients between the telescope and its surroundings. Such effects can limit the optical performance of the system and are a primary concern for all modern telescopes.

☀️🔭 The European Solar Telescope (EST) is specifically engineered to minimise local seeing. But do you know how it will achieve this?

Read the full article to find out all the details! ⬇️
🔗 https://tinyurl.com/thermal-control

𝘚𝘰𝘭𝘢𝘳 𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴

#𝐒𝐮𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬: 𝐚 𝐣𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐒𝐓 𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐆𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐲 🌞

🔭 EST will provide an unprecedented insight into the formation, fine structure and energy transport of magnetic tornadoes. But what do these phenomena consist of? 👇🏻

☀️🌪️ Rotating plasma flows in the dynamic atmosphere of the Sun are referred to as solar magnetic tornadoes. The smallest tornados were first observed in 2008 with the SST as rotating dark rings called chromospheric swirls. The swirls have diameters of a few 1,000 km and rotate with speeds of many 10,000 km/hour.

This image shows a close-up region in advanced 3D numerical simulations of a magnetic tornado in the solar atmosphere. The spiral lines represent the velocity field in the tornado vortex. The images contain the observed swirl signature (top, bluish) and the Sun's surface (bottom, reddish).

📸 Image credit: Sven Wedemeyer-Böhm (ITA, University of Oslo)
✍🏻 Publication: Wedemeyer-Böhm, et al., 2012, Nature, 486, 505

More info in the EST Solar Gallery ⬇️
https://tinyurl.com/solar-tornadoes

🗞️ The Board of Trustees of the EST Canarian Foundation met this week to discuss several key topics, including the status of the selection process for the Foundation director. 👏🏻 The trustees made an unanimous decision on the selected candidate, and the next step will be to extend a formal offer to the chosen individual.

➡️ Other important organisational aspects were also discussed, such as the recruitment of engineers for the EST Project Office. 👇🏻
https://www.est-east.eu/est-around-world?id=1315

Check out the June 2024 issue of the EST newsletter for the latest news about the project at 👉🏻 https://tinyurl.com/ESTNews14

Some highlights include:

• The University of Graz joins the EST Foundation
• Director and Administrator of EST Foundation sought
• Pier Optical Path Design Update
• Polarimetric Calibration and Alignment Assembly
• Communication and outreach Activities

And much more. 👏 Don't miss out!

If you are interested in receiving the latest news about the project's progress via email, sign up here!⬇️
https://est-east.us20.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=296cd2c54370407894856e774&id=f751350458

On 4 and 5 June 2024, EST took part in the conference '𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗜𝗻𝗳𝗿𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗮 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗚𝗹𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗹, 𝗘𝗻𝘃𝗶𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗼-𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝘅𝘁', organised by the Belgian Presidency of the European Council in collaboration with the European Roadmap for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI).

In the event, held at the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels, three main topics were addressed: research infrastructures (RIs) as key players of strategic autonomy in a changing global context, the socio-economic and environmental impact of RIs, and their broad ecosystems. In particular, the benefits and challenges of European Research Infrastructure Consortiums (ERICs) were discussed, as well as their role in building a European ecosystem of science and innovation.

👉🏻 The ERIC is the specific legal entity that will make the construction and operation of EST possible. For that reason, several EST representatives attended the conference on behalf of the project and made contacts with funding agencies and other RIs that are already ERICs, thus preparing the path that EST will have to take towards construction. ☀️🔭

One of the main objectives of the EST Canarian Foundation is precisely to pave the way for the establishment of the EST ERIC. The EST team is working intensively to achieve this status. 🙌🏻

All the information about this conference ⬇️
https://belgian-presidency.consilium.europa.eu/en/events/research-infrastructures-in-a-changing-global-environmental-and-socio-economical-context/

Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación CSIC Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union 2024

𝘔𝘢𝘨𝘯𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘧𝘭𝘶𝘹 𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦

#𝐒𝐮𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬: 𝐚 𝐣𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐒𝐓 𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐆𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐲 🌞

🧲☀️ Magnetic flux emergence is the process in which the magnetic fields generated inside the Sun (below the surface) pierce the photosphere (the layer of the Sun from which most light comes from) and then rise and fill the Sun's outer atmosphere. Those magnetic fields are responsible for all the activity we see in the Sun. Magnetic flux emergence is a complex process that knits together the interior of the Sun with the layers composing its outer atmosphere.

📹 The observations were taken with the Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) on board the Japanese Hinode spacecraft. One movie presents the intensity in the Ca II H filter, sampling the low chromosphere, and the other shows the same field of view but mapping the magnetic field in the surface. Positive polarities are white and negative polarities are black.

📹 Movie credit: Joten Okamoto (NAOJ/JAXA)
Text credit: Ada Ortiz (Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Oslo)
🔭 Observations: Hinode (ISAS/JAXA, NAOJ, NASA, STFC, ESA)

More info about the magnetic flux emergence in the EST Solar Gallery 👇🏻
https://tinyurl.com/magnetic-flux-emergence

The Sun is a powerful focus of attention. This star has enormous scientific relevance, as well as a major impact on everyday life on Earth. ☀️🌎

The European Solar Telescope makes the EST Solarpedia available to the educational community and general public at large. It is an open educational resource offering 461 infographics, organised in 15 main categories and 63 subcategories, dealing with a wide range of solar topics. ☀️

🎨 The infographics included in the Solarpedia were prepared by international teams of students participating in the EST School Contest "The Sun at a glance". They are provided as high-resolution files and have been reviewed by solar physicists from the EST consortium. 🔍🙌🏻👏🏻

All of them are available on the EST website for free download under a Creative Commons license ⬇️
🔗 https://www.est-east.eu/solarpedia

𝘗𝘰𝘭𝘢𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴

#𝐒𝐮𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬: 𝐚 𝐣𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐒𝐓 𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐆𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐲 🌞

📝 Studying the magnetism of the poles is important to understand the origin of the weak magnetic fields that populate the quiet Sun. ☀️ Those regions are devoid of sunspots and pores, and therefore the fields observed there must be produced by a local dynamo or be the remnants of decaying active regions transported to the poles by meridional flows. Are their properties different from those observed at lower latitudes where active regions are usually seen? 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♂️ We still do not know.

These images show the magnetic activity of the north polar region of the Sun as recorded by the spectropolarimeter aboard the Japanese Hinode satellite. 📸 The pictures display seeing-free observations of the solar surface in intensity (I), linear polarization (Q and U) and circular polarization (V) with the highest magnetic sensitivity and spatial resolution achievable nowadays.

📸 Images credit: Luis Bellot Rubio (IAA-CSIC)
🔭 Observations: Hinode (ISAS/JAXA, NAOJ, NASA, STFC, ESA)

More information about polar regions in the EST Solar Gallery ⬇️
https://tinyurl.com/polar-regions

𝐖𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐄𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞, 𝐛𝐮𝐭… 𝐡𝐨𝐰? 🔭☀️

The EST Pier Optical Path is the dioptric system in charge of transferring the light from the aplanatic secondary focal plane to the science focus, in order to feed the scientific instruments that will be located in the Coudé rooms.

This subassembly will be housed in a vacuum vessel to avoid local seeing degradation along the optical path, from the telescope structure to the Coudé rooms (20 metres length). The vacuum tube will use the first and last lenses of the POP as entrance and exit windows, respectively.

Want to know all the details about the design and functions of the EST Pier Optical Path? Read the full article here. ⬇️
https://tinyurl.com/EST-Pier-Optical-Path

This is one of the articles you can find in our last biannual Newsletter, where we inform you about all the news of the project. 👇🏻
https://est-east.eu/newsletter

𝘚𝘰𝘭𝘢𝘳 𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘴

#𝐒𝐮𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬: 𝐚 𝐣𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐒𝐓 𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐆𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐲 🌞

Solar pores are "naked" sunspots without a penumbra. A pore appears when a strong magnetic field emerges through the solar surface and inhibits the convective transfer of heat from lower layers - that is why pores look dark.

⚫☀️ Solar pores offer an excellent opportunity to study interactions between the magnetic field and moving plasma. The extremely high resolution of tens of kilometres provided by the European Solar Telescope will be fully utilised to do it. 🙌🏻

📸 The image shows a central dark pore and a group of smaller tiny pores (dark concentrations) in the lower part of the image. The overall surface is covered by solar granulation. In between the granules, in the intergranular lanes, so-called bright points sometimes appear.

📸 Image credit: Christoph Kuckein (AIP), Horst Balthasar (AIP), Sergio J. González Manrique (AISAS)

More info about solar pores and how these incredible images were taken can be found in the EST Solar Gallery ⬇️
https://tinyurl.com/solar-pores

𝐖𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐄𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞, 𝐛𝐮𝐭… 𝐡𝐨𝐰? 🔭☀️

The industrial contract for the design and supply of a prototype of a deformable secondary mirror with coil actuators for EST is well underway.

This adaptative secondary mirror (ASM) will correct the distortions caused by the atmosphere in an optimised way. In addition, the ASM will allow to reduce the number of optical surfaces of the telescope, decreasing the loss of light in the optical path. The result is that more sensitive measurements can be taken, which makes EST one of the most advanced tools to observe the Sun from the ground.

Although there are nighttime telescopes with an ASM, currently no solar telescope has one.

To know more details about the advanced prototype for the EST ASM based on coil actuators technology, read the full article here. ⬇️
https://tinyurl.com/Prototype-EST-ASM

This is one of the articles you can find in our last biannual Newsletter, where we inform you about all the news of the project. 👇🏻
https://est-east.eu/newsletter

𝐖𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐄𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞, 𝐛𝐮𝐭… 𝐡𝐨𝐰? 🔭☀️

A feasibility study has been conducted to evaluate the performance of composite materials for the elevation structure of EST.

The structure of the EST telescope has already been defined at the preliminary design level. The structure is made of steel and complies with requirements.

To improve the design and perform a materials trade-off, we have studied the feasibility of implementing a carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) design for the upper part of the Elevation Structure, in order to reduce the mass and to keep the stiffness, thus increasing the system's eigenfrequencies to have a higher bandwidth for the control of the main axes of the telescope.

To know more details about the use of composite materials in the elevation structure of EST, read the full article here. ⬇️
https://tinyurl.com/EST-Elevation-Structure

This is one of the articles you can find in our last biannual newsletter, where we inform you about all the news of the project. 👇🏻
https://est-east.eu/newsletter

𝘚𝘶𝘯𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘵 𝘤𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘱𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦

#𝐒𝐮𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬: 𝐚 𝐣𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐒𝐓 𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐆𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐲 🌞

🌞 Sunspots are the largest manifestation of magnetic fields in the solar photosphere. They appear darker than the surrounding photosphere, where convective heat transport takes place in the form of granulation. The details of energy transport within sunspots are still under debate. It is clear, however, that it must be of convective origin. Convective energy transport must occur even in the coolest parts of sunspots, since neither heat conduction nor radiative heat transport suffices to sustain the observed umbral temperatures.

The chromospheric fibrilar structure visible in the image is much enhanced in the extended active region area. The small, roundish bright points mostly visible at the periphery of the field of view correspond to instances of acoustic shocks in the mid-chromosphere. The brightening to the left of the spot is due to a sub-flare occurring at the time of acquisition.

📸 Image credit: Kevin Reardon (INAF-Arcetri, NSO/AURA/NSF)
🔭 Observations by IBIS (INAF/NSO/QUB)

More info about the chromosphere in the EST Solar Gallery 👇🏻
https://tinyurl.com/sunspot-chromosphere-gallery

If you are interested in learning more about the scientific concepts related to EST, this recommendation is for you. 🙌🏻

📹 EST produced a four-episode video series that deals with some of the EST science goals, explained by the astronomers who first studied them. Available on EST's YouTube channel, The QuEST series aims to communicate solar physics to both teenagers and adults in an informative and entertaining way.

All the episodes can be downloaded freely under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Moreover, subtitles in different languages are available thanks to the collaboration of several members of the EST consortium. 🗣️👇🏻

- English
- German
- Slovak
- Spanish

Galileo Galilei, George Ellery Hale, John Evershed or Richard Carrington are ready to tell you this story - don't wait any longer! 👉🏻 🔗 https://est-east.eu/the-quest