Hawaii is getting a new telescope - "the world's biggest and most revolutionary solar telescope," according to a press release from the University of Sheffield.
Sheffield is assisting Queens University Belfast in building the £344 million (more than $525 million) super telescope in Hawaii.
The Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) will be unveiled in 2019 after it is constructed by the U.S. National Solar Observatory on Haleakala Mountain in Maui, Hawaii. The telescope's mirror will have a diameter of 4 meters and will be able to catch "unprecedented detail" of the Sun. According to the press release, the telescope would be able to see a £1 coin (roughly the size of a quarter) from 100kms (62 miles) away.
The project will be mostly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.
"The development of this telescope provides great potential for us to make earlier forecasts of space weather hazards, such as identifying solar winds which can cause huge disruption to life on Earth," said Michail Balikhin, a professor from the University of Sheffield, according to the press release.
"Our Space System Laboratory in Sheffield has a well-established track record in space weather forecasting using a spacecraft situated about 1.5 million km from our planet," he continued. "At the moment this enables us to identify space weather, such as solar wind velocities, approximately one hour before they reach Earth, but once this telescope is built we may be able to significantly extend this time."
"The new high-resolution cameras used by the telescope will provide an unprecedented amount of solar image data," added Viktor Fedun from the University's Solar Wave Theory Group. "Researchers at Sheffield will use their leading expertise in numerical modelling of plasma processes to develop new algorithms and numerical techniques to process the data observed from the new telescope which will be really impactful to the UK science community and beyond."
Robertus von Fay-Siebenburgen, head of Solar Physics and Space Plasma Research Centre at the University of Sheffield, said, according to the press release, "This is a fantastic opportunity to significantly improve the forecasting of Space Weather. 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. The understanding and prediction of space weather is vitally important in the age of human exploration of the Solar System and the development of this new telescope will enable us to predict space weather events much earlier.
"It's also a great facility for early career scientists in the UK and will pave the way for Sheffield to remain at the forefront of solar plasma research."
