file: dot-isc16.txt last: Sep 22 2004 DUTCH OPEN TELESCOPE Report for NOVA ISC meeting nr. 16 September 22, 2004 R.J. Rutten and R.H. Hammerschlag Overview -------- - Open-DOT observing started - Halpha hardware installed; superb first image - cluster hardware installed - GREGOR canopy installed - Students-to-DOT pilot started Project management ------------------ The DOT efforts are funded until 2008 through a guarantee of the UU Faculteit Natuur- en Sterrenkunde with commitments from UU and NOVA. Utrecht solar physics is still formally a separate program of the faculty of Physics and Astronomy within the Sterrekundig Instituut Utrecht, but this separation has not really been implemented and is likely to be undone. The DOT team presently consists on the solar physics side of R.J. Rutten (UU), postdocs P. Suetterlin (NWO; UU via ASTRON since May 1) and K. Tziotziou (EC/ESMN) and AIO's A.G. de Wijn and J. Leenaarts>; on the technical side of R.H. Hammerschlag (UU) and F.C.M. Bettonvil (NWO via ASTRON), with much support from the Faculty workshop IGF (in particular A. Jaegers and P.W. Hoogendoorn). Negotiations with a UU professorship candidate with interest and expertise is solar physics and astronomical instrumentation are underway. Peter Gomory, PhD student at Tatranska Lomnica, Slovakia, will work one year at Utrecht on Marie Curie funding from NOVA. NASA awarded a SRT grant to a proposal from Lockheed-Martin (Palo Alto) including 30 K$ for three 10-day observing campaigns with the DOT during 2005-7. DOT-related funding proposals were submitted to STW (GREGOR-like canopies up to 30 m diameter) and NWO (polarimetry with the Ba II filter), decisions pending. A Europe-wide EC-FP6 proposal for ATST design studies was submitted unsuccessfully. The DOT TAC (external members Oskar von der Luehe, director Kiepenheuer Institut in Freiburg; Goran Scharmer, director Institute for Solar Physics, Stockholm; Bernhard Fleck, SOHO mission scientist for ESA, Goddard) played a key role in peer-review for the allocation of CCI ITP time for 2005 concerning all solar telescopes in the Canary Islands. A pilot for the "Students to the DOT" program has been set up with specific funding from UU. Four students will work at the DOT during October in two successive pairs under Rutten's supervision. Their tasks are to participate in DOT observing and data analysis, to work on a related solar physics project, and also to find out who is doing what why at the other telescopes on La Palma. These traineeships are part of 7.5 ects (in one case 15 ects) solar physics research projects. Our aim is to expand this program next summer. There is already a considerable waiting list of first-rate students. The DOT++ plans for DOT aperture tripling remained on hold. Progress since ISC 15 --------------------- The NWO-funded speckle processor was demonstrated at the CeBIT fair in Hanover, successfully tested at the manufacturer (Icebear Systems) in Herborn, Germany, transported by special airsprung truck to Rotterdam, packed in a 40-feet container under supervision of the DOT-team, and shipped to La Palma. The mechanical installation of the cluster (two closed racks) and the water-based cooling, heat storage and heat release systems (including a 5-cubic-meter water tank) is complete. Cabling is in progress. The parallel speckle processing software for overnight reconstruction of large data volumes progressed to the debugging phase. The Zeiss Lyot filter for Halpha (the fifth DOT multi-wavelength channel) was mounted on the telescope. The first speckle-processed Halpha image came in while this report is being written and is of fabulous quality. Precise alignment with the other channels is in progress. The PC104 control system needs further work on computer handshake and the filter translation and bandwidth change drives, but the key motor driving the bandpass tuning control already functions. The detailed optomechanical design for the sixth and final channel of the DOT tomography system, the Ba II 4554 Lyot filter from Irkutsk, is nearly complete. Many components have been ordered, the mechanical parts are in production, and specific modules are being implemented. in the control software. In addition, various optical components were ordered for polarimetry tests with this filter and very accurate solar spectropolarimetry of this line and of H-beta (to which the filter can also be tuned) was performed at IRSOL in Locarno, Switzerland, in preparation for polarimetry with this filter, in particular to define calibration procedures for speckle-reconstructed magnetography. The GREGOR canopy, a larger copy of the DOT design built under DOT-team supervision at DTO TU Delft, was successfully mounted on the former GCT building at Observatorio del Teide on Tenerife, also under supervision of the DOT team. A successful open-close test took place on September 17 in sustained winds over 25 m/s. The computer control system is being completed. Major meetings -------------- CCI and SUCOSIP (SUb-COmmittee SIte Properties), Copenhagen, June 3-4 IAU Symposium 223 "Multi-Wavelength Investigations of Solar Activity", St. Petersburg, June 13-19. SPIE meeting, "Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation", Glasgow, June, 21-25 Acceptance ceremony for the GREGOR canopy, Teide Observatory, Tenerife, July 20 DOT campaigns ------------- "Spectroscopy of the solar photosphere", July 8-15, combining DOT with VTT, DOT, SOHO and TRACE; OPTICON-supported campaign A. Kucera, J. Rybak and J. Koza, Tatranska Lomnica. This campaign was the start of "Open-DOT" time allocation. "Oscillations in prominences", September 10-21, combining DOT and SST, OPTICON-supported campaign E. Wiehr, Goettingen. "Center-to-limb variation of photospheric bright points", September 23 - October 1, combining DOT with SST, VTT, and THEMIS; CCI-ITP campaign led by Suetterlin. Milestones ---------- The DOT successfully observed the June 8 Venus transit with large interest from the public, after extensive preparation for this event. The DOT movies were advertised at the Astronomy of the Day and spaceweather.com websites. The special portal venusvoordezon.nl ran on specific broad-band servers at Utrecht and received almost 18 million hits - serving close to 110 GB of data in over 2.6 million pages to almost a hundred thousand unique visitors. Over the next months, the total grew to 3 million pages served to 180000 unique visitors. First speckle-reconstructed Halpha image on September 22, from data taken on September 21. It looks fabulous! Student Mabula Haverkamp graduated on September 5. His graduation project "Solar magnetic fluxtubes diagnosed from isolated internetwork bright points" may become Paper IV in the DOT tomography series. Publications ------------ P. Suetterlin, L.R. Bellot Rubio, R. Schlichenmaier, 2004 "Asymmetrical appearance of dark-cored filaments in sunspot penumbrae", A&A 424, 1049 F.C.M. Bettonvil, R.H. Hammerschlag, P. Suetterlin, R.J. Rutten, A.P.L. Jaegers, 2004, "DOT++: Dutch Open Telescope with 1.4-m aperture", SPIE 5489, in press R.H. Hammerschlag, O. von der Luehe, F.C.M. Bettonvil, A.P.L. Jaegers, F. Snik, 2004 "GISOT: A giant solar telescope", SPIE 5489, in press R.J. Rutten, F.C.M. Bettonvil, R.H. Hammerschlag, A.P.L. Jaegers, J. Leenaarts, F. Snik, P. Suetterlin, K. Tziotziou, A.G. de Wijn, 2004, "The Dutch Open Telescope on La Palma", Procs. IAU Symposium 223, in press J. Leenaarts, S. Wedemeyer-Boehm, 2004, "DOT tomography of the solar atmosphere III. Observations and simulations of reversed granulation", A&A, in press Critical areas -------------- The lack of manpower, in particular technical support in software and electronics, and the comparatively low funding level remain major critical constraints. Nevertheless, we are confident that we will manage to exploit the DOT's unique capabilities in worldwide solar physics given by the now-imminent completion of the six-channel tomography and large-volume processing systems. Plans for the coming half year ----------------------------- CC-ITP multi-telescope campaign led by Suetterlin September 23 - October 1. Students-at-DOT pilot October 1-27. OPTICON multi-telescope campagn led by Roudier (Toulouse) October 5-15. Co-observing with SST spectrometry (Carlsson, Oslo) October 15-30. ESMN School and Mid-term Review at Tatranska Lomnica, November 1-11 (http://esmn.astro.uu.nl/ and http://esmn2004.astro.uu.nl/). CC-ITP multi-telescope campaign led by Balthasar (Potsdam) November 23 - December 2. Installation of speckle-processor software and start of high-volume processing. Completion of Halpha control electronics and software. Trial and perfection of two-channel speckle reconstruction followed by implementation on the DOT speckle processor. Software using this technique in which wide-band speckle imaging delivers the S/N needed to speckle-reconstruct narrow-band images, was already developed in collaboration with colleagues at Freiburg and Goettingen but needs to be adapted to the DOT Lyot filters and to be ported to C and parallelized for the DSP cluster. Continue work on the Ba II channel (optics, mechanics, control, software), probably involving INTAS-funded effort by Skomorovsky and colleagues (Irkutsk) and also involving further development of Ba II polarimetry (TUE student Frans Snik). Hopefully installation on the telescope by early summer. Continue work on telescope automation and safeguarding. Peer review, time allocation and scheduling for the 2005 season, including CCI-ITP and OPTICON allocations. Development and streamlining of DOT data mining and data spreading procedures, possibly involving Virtual Solar Observatory trials. Expansion of the Students-to-DOT program, possibly involving other NOVA institutes.