Name: European Solar Telescope – participation of the Czech Republic
Institution: Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences
Coordinator: Mgr. Jan Jurčák, Ph.D.; jurcak@asu.cas.cz
Website
EST is the only planned RI focused primarily on the field of solar physics and unites the interests of solar research community in ERA. The realisation of EST will provide the user community with access to the most advanced instruments designed to observe the Sun. The institutes involved in EST will have the preferential right to use most of the observation time, but at the same time, it is planned to provide all the observed and calibrated data in freely accessible databases after a proprietary period of time. It is assumed that the construction of EST will start in 2025 and the device will become operational in 2031. EST cannot be realised by any single European country alone, therefore EAST (European Association for Solar Telescopes) was established to coordinate the development, construction and future operation of EST. The European Solar Telescope – Fundación Canaria is being established as the interim legal structure with the main objective to set up the EST-ERIC (European Solar Telescope – European Research Infrastructure Consortium) for the construction and operation phase of EST. The goal of EST-CZ is to ensure the participation of Czechia in the implementation and operation of EST (European Solar Telescope). EST will become an RI focused on observations of the Sun, the only star that can be investigated in high resolution and on which life on Earth depends. This four-meter aperture solar telescope will be one of the two largest solar instruments worldwide. It will be located at La Palma, one of the Canary Islands, Spain, where the best observation conditions in Europe are available. EST will provide the most advanced observations, allowing for understanding the complex mechanisms governing the magnetic activity of the Sun and studying fundamental interactions between plasma, magnetic fields and radiation in the stellar atmospheres. The data will enable to understand in greater detail how energetic events taking place in the solar atmosphere influence space weather and affect human technologies.
Societal and economic impacts
The application potential of EST-CZ will be most relevant in the near future. EST is finishing its preparatory phase and generates incentives for industrial growth through the participation of private companies in civil works, the provision of components, systems and instrumentation, or technological development, etc. It is expected that the percentage of participation of the European industry in EST will be in line with the financial contribution from each individual involved country. Since EST is focused on fundamental research, the development of state-of-the-art technologies is the only direct application potential of EST-CZ. Apart from that, the socioeconomic impact of EST-CZ will be on higher education, in particular the level of Ph.D. students. New knowledge gained via EST can be used to understand the principles of natural threats associated with solar activity and space weather (e.g., geomagnetic storms, power outages, disruptions of satellite communications and navigation, etc.).
