Sheffield leads consortium of UK universities in European Solar Telescope project

Launched in 2008, the European Solar Telescope (EST) project aims to provide insights into the mechanisms underlying solar flares and coronal mass ejections that determine so-called ‘space weather’.

Leading the United Kingdom Universities Consortium (UKUC), Sheffield University signed the deed of the EST’s Canary Foundation in Santa Cruz, Tenerife on July 25, 2023. The agreement sees six UK universities, including Aberystwyth, Belfast, Durham, Exeter and Glasgow, along with six European countries, commit to the construction of the telescope at the El Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, at La Palma in Spain.

Professor Robertus von Fay-Siebenburgen, from Sheffield University’s School of Mathematics and Statistics, will be a principal investigator for the UKUC project.

“The EST will be the biggest ground-based solar telescope constructed in Europe and will keep its European partners at the forefront of solar physics research,” he said in a statement. “This kind of unrivalled research infrastructure will provide European astronomers and plasma-astrophysicists with an extraordinary tool for observing the Sun and its space weather, one that will pave the way for scientific advancements in some of the world’s biggest and most important challenges, such as the development of green fusion energy.