Europe and UK join forces to build European Solar Telescope

Ground-breaking project will analyse 'space weather', which affects satellites and power grids on Earth

Teams from Britain and Europe will help build the continent's largest solar telescope. Photo: IDOM

Britain and Europe will team up to build a solar telescope that will offer invaluable insights into "space weather" that causes phenomena on Earth such as the Northern Lights.

The European Solar Telescope (EST) project, which began in 2008, aims to advance scientific understanding of the physics behind solar flares and coronal mass ejections – explosive outbursts of plasma from the Sun.

These events can lead to geomagnetic storms on Earth, such as the Northern Lights, and also have the potential to affect power grids and satellites orbiting Earth such as GPS.

Six UK universities, led by the University of Sheffield, have stepped up to back the construction of what will be the largest solar telescope based on the ground in Europe.

The UK Universities Consortium (UKUC) on Tuesday signed the deeds, which will commit to the construction of the telescope at the El Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma, Spain.

Prof Robert von Fay-Siebenburgen, from the University of Sheffield’s school of mathematics and statistics, will be a principal investigator for the project.

He said: “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.

“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.

“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.”

The EST aims to improve understanding of the Sun by observing its magnetic field.

The University of Sheffield will be developing systems to process the vast amounts of data produced by the telescope.

It is estimated it will produce a petabyte of data per day, roughly equivalent to the amount of data used to store more than 220,000 DVD films.

Sheffield will be responsible for how the project can handle and analyse some of this information.

Prof Lyndsay Fletcher, of the University of Glasgow’s school of physics and astronomy, was part of the team responsible for defining the telescope requirements.

She said: “Our research into solar flares and prominences stands to benefit enormously, since the innovative design of the telescope means that it is optimised for measuring the Sun’s magnetic field, which governs these energetic phenomena.

“Novel instrumentation, recording the Sun’s structure and dynamics with four times the spatial detail of any existing solar telescope in Europe, will lead to a step-change in understanding of energetic events on our nearest star."