The US National Science Foundation 4m Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) on Haleakala, Maui is the largest solar telescope in the world. DKIST’s superb resolution and polarimetric sensitivity will enable astronomers to explore the origins of solar magnetism, the mechanisms of coronal heating and drivers of flares and coronal mass ejections. DKIST operates as a coronagraph at infrared wavelengths, providing crucial measurements of the magnetic field in the corona. During its Operations Commissioning Phase, DKIST has already conducted a significant number of shared-risk observations for community researchers. The complex raw data are calibrated by the DKIST Data Center located in Boulder and distributed to the science community. We’ll present examples of science results and discuss lessons learned. Ongoing instrument development efforts include, an upgrade of the single-conjugate adaptive optics system to a multi-conjugate AO, the implementation of image slicers for the DL-NIRSP instrument and development of infrared detectors the DL- and CRYO-NIRSP instruments.
The classical single conjugate adaptive optics system of the new 4-meter Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope is going to be replaced by a multi-conjugate system for adaptive optics supported observations of the Sun in an enlarged field of view. The multi-conjugate correction will expand the high-order adaptive optics wavefront correction over a wider field of view up to 1 arcminute. The ground-layer-only correction will uniformly improve the seeing across a field of view larger than 2 arcminutes for observations that require lower resolution but very large fields. Thus, the ground-layer & multi-conjugate adaptive optics upgrade will add new potential to the wavefront correction system and thereby boost the scientific output of the telescope. In this conference, we layout the overall project, its subsystems and the current status.
The National Science Foundation’s 4m Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) on Haleakala, Maui is now the largest solar telescope in the world. DKIST’s superb resolution and polarimetric sensitivity will enable astronomers to unravel many of the mysteries the Sun presents, including the origin of solar magnetism, the mechanisms of coronal heating and drivers of flares and coronal mass ejections. Five instruments, four of which provide highly sensitive measurements of solar magnetic fields, including the illusive magnetic field of the faint solar corona. DKIST operates as a coronagraph at infrared wavelengths where the sky background is low and bright coronal emission lines are available. The high-order, single-conjugate adaptive optics system (AO) provides diffraction limited imaging and the ability to resolve features approximately 20 km on the Sun. A multi-conjugate AO upgrade is in progress. With these unique capabilities DKIST will address basic research aspects of Space Weather and help improve predictive capabilities. DKIST has completed construction and is now in the early phases of operations. Community proposal-based shared-risk observations are conducted by the DKIST operations team.
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