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Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope

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Wavelength
  
300nm – 12µm

Angular resolution
  
0.023 arcsec at 400 nm

Diameter
  
400 cm

Organisation
  
NSO, HAO, NJIT, UH IfA and UChicago

Location(s)
  
Haleakala Observatory, Hawaii, United States

Telescope style
  
Off-axis, all-reflecting Gregorian telescope

The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST), formerly Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST), is a large domed solar telescope facility with 4 meter wide primary mirror that is under construction by the National Solar Observatory atop the Haleakala volcano on the Pacific island of Maui. The telescope was officially named after late Hawaii Senator Daniel K. Inouye in December 2013, while still under construction. On completion around 2018, it will be the world's largest solar telescope.

DKIST features an off-axis, clear aperture design to allow for observations with unprecedented spatial, spectral and temporal resolution. Avoiding a central obstruction is important to minimize scattered light when observing the faint solar corona, but it also eases operation of adaptive optics and later image reconstruction such as speckle imaging.

The site on Haleakala was selected for its clear daytime atmospheric seeing conditions, which will enable study of the solar corona. The DKIST enclosure will house the solar telescope, capable of observing features on the Sun that are only 30 km across.

Construction at the DKIST site began on January 2013 and is currently under way (as of August 2015) Work on the telescope housing was completed in September 2013.

Partners

The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope is a collaboration of 22 institutions:

  • Corporate Office: Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy
  • Funding Agency: National Science Foundation
  • Principal Investigator: National Solar Observatory
  • Co-Principal Investigators:
  • High Altitude Observatory
  • New Jersey Institute of Technology
  • University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy
  • University of Chicago Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Collaborators:
  • Air Force Research Laboratory
  • California Institute of Technology's Laboratories of Applied Physics, Bellan Plasma Group
  • California State University at Northridge's Department of Physics and Astronomy
  • Colorado Research Associates
  • Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
  • Kiepenheuer-Institut für Sonnenphysik, Freiburg, Germany
  • Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory
  • Michigan State University's Department of Physics and Astronomy
  • Montana State University's Department of Physics
  • NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
  • NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
  • Princeton University's Plasma Physics Laboratory
  • Southwest Research Institute's Instrumentation and Space Research Division
  • Stanford University's W.W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory
  • University of California Los Angeles
  • University of California San Diego's Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences
  • University of Chicago's Department of Mathematics
  • University of Colorado at Boulder's Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy
  • University of Colorado at Boulder's Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics
  • University of Rochester's Department of Physics and Astronomy

    • References

    Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA