The National Science Foundation's Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST), known as the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST) until 2013, is a large solar telescope managed by the National Solar Observatory, that is currently under construction. With a planned completion date of 2019, it is expected to become the world's largest solar telescope. It is a collaboration of numerous research institutions.
The telescope will have a 4.0-metre (160 in) diameter primary mirror housed in a large dome, located at Haleakala Observatory on the Hawaiian island of Maui. While still under construction, the telescope was officially named after a US Senator for Hawaii, Daniel K. Inouye.
Video Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope
Design
DKIST features an off-axis, clear aperture design. This avoids a central obstruction, minimizing scattered light when observing the faint solar corona or bright solar disk. It also eases operation of adaptive optics and later image reconstruction such as speckle imaging.
The site on the Haleakala volcano was selected for its clear daytime weather and favourable atmospheric seeing conditions. The DKIST design is intended to enable high-resolution observations of features on the Sun as small as 20 km (10 mi).
Maps Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope
Construction
The contract to build the telescope was awarded in 2010, with a then-planned completion date of 2017. Physical construction at the DKIST site began in January 2013, and work on the telescope housing was completed in September 2013.
The primary mirror was delivered to the site the night of 1-2 August 2017 and as of August 2017 the telescope structure is nearly complete, with first light expected in 2019.
Partners
As of 2014, twenty-two institutions had joined the collaboration building DKIST:
- 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
- Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii
- Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Department of Mathematics, University of Chicago
- Collaborators:
- Air Force Research Laboratory
- Bellan Plasma Group, Laboratories of Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, California State University at Northridge
- Colorado Research Associates
- Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
- Kiepenheuer-Institut für Sonnenphysik, Freiburg, Germany
- Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University
- Department of Physics, Montana State University
- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
- NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
- Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton University
- Instrumentation and Space Research Division, Southwest Research Institute
- W.W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory, Stanford University
- University of California Los Angeles
- Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences, University of California, San Diego
- Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy and Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, University of Colorado at Boulder
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester
See also
- European Solar Telescope
- List of solar telescopes
References
Footnotes
Sources
- Keil, S. L.; Rimmele, T. R.; Wagner, J.; The ATST team (June 2010). "Advanced Technology Solar Telescope: A status report". Astronomische Nachrichten. 331 (6): 609-614. Bibcode:2010AN....331..609K. doi:10.1002/asna.201011385.
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