Sheffield leads consortium of UK universities in European Solar Telescope project

Launched in 2008, the European Solar Telescope (EST) project aims to provide insights into the mechanisms underlying solar flares and coronal mass ejections that determine so-called ‘space weather’.

Leading the United Kingdom Universities Consortium (UKUC), Sheffield University signed the deed of the EST’s Canary Foundation in Santa Cruz, Tenerife on July 25, 2023. The agreement sees six UK universities, including Aberystwyth, Belfast, Durham, Exeter and Glasgow, along with six European countries, commit to the construction of the telescope at the El Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, at La Palma in Spain.

Professor Robertus von Fay-Siebenburgen, from Sheffield University’s School of Mathematics and Statistics, will be a principal investigator for the UKUC project.

“The EST will be the biggest ground-based solar telescope constructed in Europe and will keep its European partners at the forefront of solar physics research,” he said in a statement. “This kind of unrivalled research infrastructure will provide European astronomers and plasma-astrophysicists with an extraordinary tool for observing the Sun and its space weather, one that will pave the way for scientific advancements in some of the world’s biggest and most important challenges, such as the development of green fusion energy.

He continued: “By being able to study the physical processes happening in the solar chromosphere in such detail for the first time, we will gain new insight into how the heating mechanisms occur that underpin the plasma heating processes. Learning from how nature does it will help us explore how to replicate the process for the benefit of humankind.”

One of the EST’s primary objectives is to improve understanding of the Sun by observing its magnetic fields in exceptional detail. Once operational, the large aperture telescope will be able to uncover signals currently hidden in the noise and reveal the existence of unknown, tiny magnetic structures.

The optical configuration and instrumentation of EST have been designed to study the magnetic and dynamic coupling of the solar atmosphere, and capture the interactions between the different atmospheric layers of the Sun.

Additionally, a comprehensive set of instruments will be installed to enable simultaneous observations across multiple wavelengths, giving the EST a higher efficiency compared to existing or future telescopes, whether ground-based or space-borne.

Sheffield University will develop the designs for the capability of the project to process data produced by the telescope, which is estimated at a petabyte per day.

The preliminary design phase of the telescope, which was funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme, has recently been completed. After a construction period of six years, the EST’s first light is planned for 2028-2029.