Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771
ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM
Monday, April 21, 2008 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium
Thomas Rimmele
"The Advanced Technology Solar Telescope: Science Goals, Technical Challenges and Project Status"
ABSTRACT -- The 4 meter Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST) will be the most powerful solar telescope and the world’s leading resource for studying solar magnetism that controls the solar wind, flares, coronal mass ejections and variability in the Sun’s output. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2009 on Haleakala, Maui, Hawaii.
The talk will begin with an overview of project goals and requirements. A summary of the design status will follow, including a discussion of technical and engineering challenges.
The ATST will observe the dynamic magnetic field of the sun with high resolution and high sensitivity, in the corona and other regions of the solar atmosphere. The 4 meter aperture will allow the telescope to resolve features at 0.03" (20km on the sun) at visible wavelengths. The science requirement for polarimetric sensitivity is 10-5 relative to intensity, and for accuracy is 5×10-4 relative to intensity. The telescope will use a high order adaptive optics system. The instruments will be in a lab at the Coudé focus.
The talk will end with a discussion of the telescope’s unique capabilities. For example, the ATST will be able to to carry out highly sensitive infrared observations at high spatial resolution (0.08" at 1.6 micron), consistently and over long periods of time.
The first generation instruments include: the Visible-Light Broadband Imager (VLBI), the Visible Spectro-Polarimeter (ViSP), the Near-IR Spectro-Polarimeter (NIRSP), which includes a coronal module, and the Visible Tunable Filter.
SPEAKER -- Thomas Rimmele is a full time astronomer with tenure at the National Solar Observatory and a research professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology/Rutgers University. He received his diploma and PhD at the University of Freiburg, Germany. He is project scientist for the ATST, ATST adaptive optics team leader, and chief scientist for the DST.