UK designed cameras to improve space "weather forecasts"

The cameras are going to be installed onto the world’s biggest solar telescope that is being built with the help of researchers from Sheffield University.

Led by Queens University Belfast, the Sheffield team is building cameras for the £344m super telescope which will be situated in Hawaii.

‘In 1996 a particularly large amount of energetic solar plasma material was ejected from the Sun towards the Earth, which damaged satellites and electrical transmission facilities, as well as caused disruption to communications systems.’

Prof Robertus von Fay-Siebenburgen, head of Solar Physics and Space Plasma Research Centre, Sheffield University 

Scheduled for launch in 2019, the Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) is being constructed by the US National Solar Observatory on Haleakala mountain in Maui, Hawaii.

With a 4m diameter primary mirror, it is hoped that DKIST will address fundamental questions at the core of contemporary solar physics via high-speed spectroscopic and magnetic measurements of the solar photosphere, chromosphere and corona.