Overview and Status Report on the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics

Scientific paper

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7500 Solar Physics, Astrophysics, And Astronomy, 7507 Chromosphere, 7509 Corona, 7529 Photosphere, 7594 Instruments And Techniques

Scientific paper

The ATST is a 4-m aperture, off-axis solar telescope with integrated adaptive optics, low-scattered light, infrared, coronagraphic, and polarimetric capabilities. It will resolve the essential, fine-scale magnetic features and their dynamics that dictate the varying release of energy from the Sun's atmosphere. The ATST design is optimized in terms of throughput, scattered light, and instrumental polarization properties to perform precision vector magnetic field measurements down to its diffraction limit (0.03 arcsec at 500 nm) and throughout the solar atmosphere. Its collecting area, which is a factor of 16 greater than today's solar telescopes, will provide the sensitivity to measure both weak fields and rapidly evolving stronger fields. It has a factor of 64 greater collecting area than the largest existing coronagraph, and will provide the sensitivity and coronagraphic capability needed to measure the weak, fine-scale coronal magnetic fields. With adaptive optics and a set of facility class instrumentation the ATST will be the worlds leading resource for studying solar magnetism. ATST will be the successor to the solar telescopes built in the 1960s and 1970s, and is a natural complement to planned space missions. Starting in late 2001, ATST began a design and development phase. To date the D&D phase has produced and refined a science requirements document and a conceptual design that would meet those requirements. A conceptual design review was held in August of 2003. Following the review, a construction proposal, including a complete work breakdown structure and cost, was submitted in early 2004 and was successfully peer reviewed. NSF astronomy is now in the process of submitting ATST to the NSF Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction program review process. During the D&D phase, a thorough site survey was also conducted resulting in Haleakala as the site best able to fulfill the ATST science requirements. We present a brief overview of the ATST program, how it fits into the broader picture of solar facilities and capabilities, and discuss the current status of the ATST project and plans for constructing and commissioning the ATST.

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