SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 27 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –
Next Tuesday, at 12 noon, the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid will host the presentation of the European Solar Telescope (EST), the largest in Europe, with a primary mirror of 4.2 meters in diameter and a height of 44 meters and which construction will begin in 2024 at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma to come into operation in 2029.
Spain leads the international EST consortium through the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), as coordinator, and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC), and this project will provide astronomers with a unique tool to understand the Sun and how it determines the conditions of near-Earth space.
The event will be attended by the President of the CSIC, Rosa Menéndez, the Secretary General for Research, Raquel Yotti, and the Deputy Director General for the Internationalization of Science and Innovation, Inmaculada Figueroa, and the researchers Manuel Collados, from the IAC, and Luis Bellot , from the IAA-CSIC, will be in charge of explaining in detail the EST project and the Spanish contribution to this project.
In addition, ‘Reaching for the sun’ will be screened, a documentary presented by its director Emilio García (IAA-CSIC) that reviews more than 400 years of history on the observation of the Sun in Europe since Galileo Galilei and that locates the Solar Telescope European within the framework of research in current solar physics.
“For scientists, one of the biggest challenges facing solar physics is to understand the processes that generate and concentrate magnetic fields in the lower part of the photosphere, the region from which the visible light of the Sun that reaches to Earth”, explains Bellot in a note from the CSIC.
Although there are solar telescopes with advanced technologies, these do not yet allow us to observe the fundamental processes that give rise to these magnetic phenomena and understand them, the project points out, it is “fundamental” because the Sun provides a unique model to understand the rest of stars of the Universe and serves as a reference in terms of physical processes, chemical composition, structure and evolution.
LOW SOLAR ATMOSPHERE
The aim of the EST project is to investigate the structure, dynamics and energy of the lower solar atmosphere, where magnetic fields continually interact with plasma and magnetic energy is occasionally released in the form of powerful explosions.
This requires observing fundamental processes on a small scale, that is, less than 30 kilometers on the solar surface, they point out from the CSIC.
To do this, the telescope will be equipped with a 4.2-meter mirror, an advanced adaptive optics system and specialized instruments for high-sensitivity observations throughout the visible and near-infrared spectrum.
Considered a flagship of European solar physics, the project was included in the roadmap of the European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) in 2016 and is promoted by the European Association of Solar Telescopes (EAST), which is made up of 26 institutions belonging to 18 European countries and represents a community of more than 600 solar physicists.
