Thomas Rimmele, National Solar Observatory; DKIST Team, National Solar Observatory
Keywords: Telescopes, Adaptive Optics, Instrumentation, Polarimetry, Solar Astronomy, Space Weather
Abstract:
The National Science Foundation’s 4m Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) on Haleakala, Maui is now the largest solar telescope in the world. DKIST’s superb resolution and polarimetric sensitivity will enable astronomers to unravel many of the mysteries the Sun presents, including the origin of solar magnetism, the mechanisms of coronal heating and drivers of flares and coronal mass ejections. Five instruments, four of which provide highly sensitive measurements of solar magnetic fields, including the illusive magnetic field of the faint solar corona.
The design allows DKIST to operate as a coronagraph at infrared wavelengths where the sky background is low and bright coronal emission lines are available. The high-order, single-conjugate adaptive optics system (AO) provides diffraction limited imaging and the ability to resolve features approximately 20 km on the Sun. A multi-conjugate AO upgrade is in progress. Achieving this resolution is critical for the ability to observe magnetic structures at their fundamental scales. With these unique capabilities DKIST will address basic research aspects of Space Weather and help improve predictive capabilities. The DKIST instruments will produce large and complex data sets, which will be distributed through the NSO/DKIST Data Center.
DKIST has achieved first engineering solar light in December of 2019. Due to COVID the start of the operations commissioning phase is delayed and is now expected for fall of 2021. We summarize, science objectives, design, status of DKIST and present first images and movies obtained with DKIST.
Date of Conference: September 14-17, 2021
Track: Optical Systems & Instrumentation