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His name is GREGOR and it has just been installed at the Teide Observatory of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC). In addition to being the largest solar telescope in Europe , it is the third largest in the world. It has an aperture of 1.5 meters, which together with the innovative adaptive optics system, which compensates for atmospheric turbulence , achieves an image quality that, until now, no terrestrial solar telescope has obtained, both in the visible range and in infrared. The resulting spatial, spectral and temporal resolution allows researchers to follow physical processes on the Sun’s surface on scales as small as 70 km .
Its advanced technology will allow the scientific community to study the Sun with a level of detail unprecedented to date. Not only will it be possible to better understand the physical processes that occur in most stars in the universe, but also to solve earthly questions: solar activity affects and even damages satellites and power grids in different regions of the Earth. Deepening your knowledge can help mitigate these high-impact problems.
The telescope has been designed to make observations of the solar photosphere – the layer from which most of the light and heat received on Earth comes from – and the chromosphere , the layer of the solar atmosphere that is located just above from the previous one. But it can also be used at night: “distant suns” will be monitored to find out if they have the same cyclical behavior as our star.
