The European Solar Telescope
C. Quintero Noda, R. Schlichenmaier, L. R. Bellot Rubio, M. G. Löfdahl, E. Khomenko, J. Jurčák, J. Leenaarts, C. Kuckein, S. J. González Manrique, S. Gunár, C. J. Nelson, J. de la Cruz Rodríguez, K. Tziotziou, G. Tsiropoula, G. Aulanier, Jean Aboudarham, Daniele Allegri, Ernest Alsina Ballester, J.-P. Amans, A. Asensio Ramos, F. J. Bailén, María Balaguer, Veronica Baldini, H. Balthasar, Teresa Barata, Krzysztof Barczyński, M. Barreto Cabrera, Audrey Baur, Clémentine Béchet, C. Beck, Marta Belío-Asin, N. Bello-González, Luca Belluzzi, R. D. Bentley, S. V. Berdyugina, D. Berghmans, A. Berlicki, F. Berrilli, Thomas Berkefeld, Felix Bettonvil, M. Bianda, J. Bienes Pérez, Sergio Bonaque‐González, R. Brajša, V. Bommier, Philippe-A. Bourdin, J. Burgos Martín, D. Calchetti, Ariadna Calcines, J. Calvo Tovar, R. J. Campbell, Y. Carballo-Martín, V. Carbone, E. S. Carlín, M. Carlsson, J. Castro López, L. Cavaller, F. Cavallini, G. Cauzzi, M. Cecconi, Haresh Chulani, R. Cirami, Giuseppe Consolini, Igor Coretti, R. Cosentino, Juan Cózar-Castellano, K. Dalmasse, S. Danilović, M. de Juan Ovelar, D. Del Moro, Tanausú del Pino Alemán, J. C. del Toro Iniesta, C. Denker, Sajal Kumar Dhara, P. Di Marcantonio, C. J. Díaz Baso, A. Diercke, Ekaterina Dineva, J. J. Díaz-García, H.‐P. Doerr, Gerry Doyle, R. Erdélyi, I. Ermolli, A. Escobar Rodríguez, S. Esteban Pozuelo, M. Faurobert, T. Felipe, A. Feller, N. Feijoo Amoedo, Bruno Femenía Castellá, J. Fernandes, Irene M. Ferro Rodríguez, I. Figueroa, L. Fletcher, A. Franco Ordovas, R. Gafeira, R.A. Gardenghi, B. Gelly, F. Giorgi, D. Gisler
Abstract
The European Solar Telescope (EST) is a project aimed at studying the magnetic connectivity of the solar atmosphere, from the deep photosphere to the upper chromosphere. Its design combines the knowledge and expertise gathered by the European solar physics community during the construction and operation of state-of-the-art solar telescopes operating in visible and near-infrared wavelengths: the Swedish 1m Solar Telescope, the German Vacuum Tower Telescope and GREGOR, the French Télescope Héliographique pour l’Étude du Magnétisme et des Instabilités Solaires, and the Dutch Open Telescope. With its 4.2 m primary mirror and an open configuration, EST will become the most powerful European ground-based facility to study the Sun in the coming decades in the visible and near-infrared bands. EST uses the most innovative technological advances: the first adaptive secondary mirror ever used in a solar telescope, a complex multi-conjugate adaptive optics with deformable mirrors that form part of the optical design in a natural way, a polarimetrically compensated telescope design that eliminates the complex temporal variation and wavelength dependence of the telescope Mueller matrix, and an instrument suite containing several (etalon-based) tunable imaging spectropolarimeters and several integral field unit spectropolarimeters. This publication summarises some fundamental science questions that can be addressed with the telescope, together with a complete description of its major subsystems.